Today Arrives, Becoming Tomorrow
by sadcatsam
Summary: Silver accidentally transports Sonic, his friends, and Eggman to the future. Panicked, the group must now find a way to return home while dealing with any potential problems they may have caused for themselves and for others. Not only must they figure out how to return home but they become plagued with memories, and the lack of some.
1. one problem after the other

"You leavin' already?"

Silver drew in a deep breath as he looked behind him seeing Sonic. There came a smile from the white hedgehog as he took the other. The seven chaos emeralds laid upon the floor around him and Eggman was sitting there grumbling at the destroyed machine that had been dispatched by Silver, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. The silver furred teen stretched his arms in the air, glad that the crisis that would have had the potential to fling his future into rot was taken care of.

"Yeah, I should get home. I have to make sure that everything is ok." The albino looked down at the remains of Eggman's giant mech, sparks were flying out from broken wires and the like. The hedgehog looked back at Sonic, seeing that a few of his friends were beginning to pick up the remaining chaos emeralds that had been left upon the ground. "It was nice seeing you guys again, but I guess I should get going." Silver took a few awkward steps back, taking out a gem of his own, something completely different than a Chaos Emerald. It looked like a moonstone, however, instead of it looking white or blue, it looked like lava itself had been captured within the glass. It took form in the shape of a toothpick, it fit in Silver's hand perfectly.

Silver closed his eyes, focusing on the stone within his hands. Eventually it started to float, spinning at a slow and steady speed. At the same moment the chaos emeralds that have been on the ground or being held by the others slowly began to lift from the ground. They began to circle around Silver, much to his own confusion, however it was dully ignored as his focus came to being returned home to his rightful point in time. Be this was accidental, a few of the people surrounding him were shouting the words stop. Yet, to Silver's, he thought that they were all shouting at something else entirely. The emeralds also began to shift around Silver, like a clockwork, and although Sonic attempted to snatch one or two of them out of this clock, it rejected him by sending a current through him as if a force field were preventing him from grabbing one.

"Silver!" shouted someone. It was this that Silver's eyes opened slightly, seeing that the Chaos Emeralds have made him the center of this clock. A look of dread was on everyone's faces, and before Silver could stop himself, there was a brilliant flash of white, then nothing.

* * *

Silver came to, snow was falling lightly upon his face. Lightly, he pressed his palm against his forehead and he felt as if something was pounding against his skull. Some deal amount of snow had fallen on him, covering parts of his body with whiteness (yet it didn't look that much had changed since the whole of body was grey-white). Slowly, Silver sat upright, shaking some snow off of him. Casually he sniffed the air, and the welcoming smell of his home flooded him, however it was only slightly different.

"_Finally_, you're awake. I was just about ready to leave ya there," came a familiar voice. The hedgehog's ears perked up, and then he turned to see a shivering Sonic and Tails. "Mind if you tell us where we're at?" A look of dread covered Silver's face as if his heart had stopped beating. It felt as if his stomach was in his throat and his heart was at the very bottom of the Earth itself as he looked at the two people that stood there freezing. "Hey, you frozen stiff there?" Sonic bent over and poked the poor young hedgehog's forehead.

Silver shook his head, slapping the prodding hand away from him. "N-No, I..." The words couldn't come out of his mouth and it almost sounded as if they were slurring. "You're in the future." He set those words on the table heavily and one might have heard a needle drop from the ARK when he said that. They looked at him in disbelief first, then they began to think. Tails seemed to have a look of concern whilst Sonic tried to keep a cool collected face, seemingly uncaring for what Silver just said to him.

Tails was the first to speak, "So we're in the future?" Silver nodded as the fox tried to wrap this around his head.

Before Silver could open his mouth to explain the situation in detail, Sonic spoke, "Can't you just transport us back?"

The albino shook his head. "Time travel isn't that easy. The timestone I use to get around the place can only transport one person at a time and I'm too inexperienced with my powers to actually shift through time without that help." Silver played around with his thumbs, giving a sigh. "We need to get the chaos emeralds and the timestone."

"Well, I guess we can talk about it later." The blue blur shrugged, "Can we just get out of this snow? My quills are going to freeze off."

Silver nodded his head, getting up from the snow, shaking off whatever was on him. He motioned them to follow, "This way. Luckily we were transported near my home- well, if its even still there." Perhaps it might have seemed odd at first that Silver lived somewhere as this place, however it was understandable. As he was not affected by time, it was best to live out of the way as possible in case anything should happen in the past that affected his present. It made his life easier, be it a bit lonely. It was just something he got use to, besides, the snow was lovely out here.

"You live out here in the middle of no where? Jeez, I thought you would live in some huge palace or something." Perhaps a big huge palace was something Silver deserved after all that he had done for his time, but it didn't matter much to him. He was content.

A small laughter escaped him however. "Maybe, but this is my home. Anyway one of the largest cities on the planet is not too far from my home, so it's not that bad." Undoubtedly, this made Sonic and Tails even more confused. One of the largest cities? Then wouldn't there be more houses lying about, or even large structures? All that surrounded them was icy cliffs towering over them, and even more steep ledges spiraling downward into the earth. It, somehow, amused Silver to see everyone's confused faces. Perhaps it be later that he would show them, but now it was to get to warmth. Besides, he wasn't too sure that such structures even existed anymore seeing that Sonic and Tails were here, and probably many more of his friends. The future (or rather present) would change to that. "Here."

They came to a crack in the floor. It broke apart in a V shape way, on the opposite cliff, 10 meters down, was a small metallic door. Near the door was a flat ledge, perfect for a group of people to stand. "When I said you lived in the middle of nowhere I didn't think it was really in the middle of nowhere," Sonic commented. Silver merely rolled his eyes. Without warning, Silver used his powers to pick Sonic up and make him float over to the ledge, letting him land, not so gracefully, on his rump.

"Was that necessary?" Tails whispered.

"No, but he kinda deserved it." The fox pup silently agreed. Together, Tails and Silver flew down at the ledge. Sonic, whom as rubbing his sore spot shot a not-so-dirty look at Silver who was facing the door now. The metallic door was in a triangle. It had no hinges nor did it have a knob. In the middle of the door was a triangular light which lightly shown red. Two dirty grey glass panels lied on each side of the metallic door. Tails was inspecting the oddly shaped door when suddenly the light turned green. The door then proceeded to split in two, however the left side didn't open all the way and stopped a quarter way due to the ice that had frozen it.

The time traveler was actually shocked to see that this structure was still standing as the future had been altered yet again since Sonic and his friends were here, then again, this abandoned place had always been here even after the numerous changes Silver made in the past, which was one of the reasons why he always stayed here. For now, Silver would worry about that issue later. The group all entered the structure, coming into a long narrow hallway. Snow covered a small bit of it near the doorway that they had entered through. The hallway was also made of metal, and it went on for a few meters until it came to another door. It looked the same as the last door, however there was no light flashing at all, it was just grey and dead.

The white hedgehog made an annoyed look. "The power's out," he thought to himself. "I'll have to fix it later." Giving a sigh, Silver looked at Sonic. "Can you help me open this?" asked he. Sonic nodded and rushed toward the door.

His hands dragged across the flat surface, finding no friction on it at all. "Hey if I'm gonna help open this I need something to grab onto!" The blue hedgehog smirked at the white one and the white one frowned at the other. "Try to get it a little open with your powers then you pull the left side and I'll pull the right. Try not to smash my fingers." At this Silver agreed. Using his powers he forced the two panels apart, making the metal give an unpleasant noise. After there was enough room for Sonic to grab onto, he too tried to shove the door back, and eventually Tails went and helped, meanwhile Silver shoved the other panel back. After about a minute the panels fell into place. Sonic made a low whistle, peering into the room that they had just opened. It was dark with just a small bit of light shining into the room due to the emergency lighting. "Nice place you got there, Silv."

The white hedgehog rubbed the back of his head, almost embarrassed. "It's pretty old, but it will keep us sheltered from the storms. Let me turn on the power, I'll be back in a few minutes. Make yourself at home I guess." As Silver ran off somewhere in the back of the seemingly abandoned house, Sonic silently looked about the place while Tails gawked at the technology. The room had a small couch, a desk, and a few other knacks. There was a table in front of the couch, it was large and rectangular, having a light blue top to it. It didn't look like it was something for dining. On the walls was nothing but a screen or two. Shoved in the corner were boxes filled with junk, however Tails found himself looking through the boxes, finding it all so amazing. The place looked as if it hadn't been touched for hundreds of years, which that probably was the case. In some areas rust was crawling all over the place, snow was in certain areas, and although they were out of the 'heat' of the environment the place was still freezing. After a minute or so, the lights suddenly flashed on and the door that the group had entered through slipped shut. Silver soon returned from the journey, carrying an empty glass box which he threw into the boxes of junk. Sonic was found lying across the couch, to which Silver wasn't pleased at. "H-Hey! Feet off the couch."

Sonic gave a look at Silver, rolled his eyes, then set his feet onto the floor. "So about being in the future and all. As much as I would like to stay, I've got some stuff to handle back at home." Silver's ears drooped slightly, feeling guilty. Tails made his way to the front of the couch and sat down, holding a piece of metal that he grabbed from the box.

"Like I said, I can't send you home without the chaos emeralds and the time stone."

"Can't we just use the chaos emeralds in this timeline to go home, and aren't there other time stones?" Tails asked.

Silver shook his head and gave a sigh, "There are two possible outcomes of the transportation. One is that I transported both the chaos emeralds and the time stone with us and they're thrown haphazardly across the land **or** they were left in the past and they're now with whoever they're with. So yes, I can, if the latter applies but there's a possibility that _those _chaos emeralds would transport back into the past and then you would have duplicate chaps emeralds which would make everything become unstable mess everything up. Just having you all here in the present is creating issues!"

"You mean having us here in the future is creating issues..." Sonic commented. Silver looked at Sonic with a piercing gaze. Before Silver had time to speak, the television turned on its own. It gave everyone in the room a small scare, and they all turned to look at it. Flat on the screen was none other than Eggman. "I guess we're not the only ones who joined the party."

Silver stood still, watching as how Eggman managed to take control of the television systems. He looked toward Sonic, "How long was I passed out?" Sonic shrugged.

"I found Sonic first, and I was wandering around for maybe an hour. We found you maybe 30 minutes later. We could have been out for a day at least," Tails answered. Silver frowned, obviously angry at himself for making this mess. They all looked at the screen, waiting for Eggman to make his big announcement.

It was nothing too out of the ordinary for Eggman at least. The talk of world domination and the like. Sonic didn't look all too concerned for the talk that Eggman was giving since it was all just talk to him. Meanwhile with Silver, there was an actual look of concern. Fear was hiding beneath his breath, not only fear, but also shame. "If I had been more careful..." he thought over and over to himself.

Silver followed close attention at the video, more than anything, of course Eggman made no hint for attacking anyone, it was merely just a airing of how great and powerful he was and how he would take over the world. To be fair, Silver doubted that since it was that the past's technology was barely even up to par with the present's technology. In fact, the first time Silver had come to the past he found the technology was so inoperable compared to the future that he merely scoffed at the idea of ever using something as old as that. When the airing ended, the television shut off, the light faded away and all that was left was the metal upon the wall that created the image of light. Silence ensued.

"I guess it's only a matter of time before Eggman actually strikes," said Sonic nonchalantly.

Angrily, Silver turned to the blue hedgehog. "You act so calm about this situation! Do you know what this could do to _my_ home? It could destroy it! Even if I send you all back it would still alter my time for the better or for worst!" The time traveler clenched his fists, absolutely fuming with anger. "Not only do I have to worry about Nega, but I also have to worry about Eggman destroying everything! What's worst is that if they band together my problems will increase ten fold!" Sonic didn't say anything, his eyes were closed, the smile had long faded away and turned into a small frown. "I would appreciate it if you cared, or at least helped! But if you won't then you can _leave_! I'm not going to baby someone who won't help me save my home, let alone their own home!" With a scowl, Silver was about to stomp out but before that Sonic's eyes opened.

The two stared at each other. Silver seemingly ready to crush Sonic into the ground with his powers, while Sonic looked at Silver almost as if nothing had happened. "You don't have to get all angry. I want to get home as much as you want to kick me out of this house right now. I just see no issue worrying about everything now when you don't even know what exactly happened." Sonic shrugged, "Besides, it's not my fault that we're in this mess." Silver mentally flinched. He had a point. It wasn't Sonic's fault, it was his own fault that this had happened (be that it was mostly his fault or not). Sonic did manage to calm Silver down, be as it was a little bit.

Eyes looked off to the side, to something that was seemingly much more interesting. "I guess you're right..." Silver whispered, "I'm sorry this is just happening so fast." There was a pause, Tails started to get up from the floor, abandoning the piece of metal that he had been holding. "I'm just scared," came a even smaller whisper.

Sonic gave a smile, waving a finger in front of him. "Just smile. Keep your head up high, and run." The words he said felt awfully familiar, like a sort of dejavu. Silver looked from the wall and back to Sonic. There was some confusion on his face, but after awhile, Silver nodded, a smile brimming his face eventually. He turned away from Sonic and to the table.

"I guess we can call it a night for now. Tomorrow I need to head to the city for supplies (if there even is a city here now), you all can come with, in case anything should turn up." Lightly, Silver placed his hands on the table. It emitted an ominous glow. Tails perked up from this, hurrying over to the table, and Sonic's curiosity was also somehow perked. They all looked at the contraption, finding it all so incredible.

"What is this?" Tails asked.

"It's a hologram table." A light grid eventually appeared from the top, and soon rising from it came a map of the entirety of the building that was Silver's home. Taking a closer look, it didn't even look like a home, it looked more like a research lab that was abandoned long ago. "This hologram table is pretty old though, the newer ones are made from entirely metal, some of them from pure light." Silver observed the hologram for a few minutes, finding that some areas were blinking red. Some small pop up windows were appearing, signaling if something needed repair, was damage, or if the door was simply locked. Sonic gave a good look at the map also, and so did Tails, they all studied it intently as Silver played with the hologram, typing in codes, unlocking doors, locking doors, and omitted warnings. "There. Everything looks fine. Later I'll show you where you can sleep, I hope you don't mind going to sleep with an empty stomach." Before Silver could press the panel to make the map fall apart the hologram started to fizz and glitch. It scared Tails slightly, and Silver sighed under his breath.

Tails looked at Silver, "What's wrong with it."

"Probably just old. Sometimes when I come here after time travel its completely destroyed." He waved his hand, "That pile of junk probably has something that could be useful for fixing it-" Before Silver could say more Tails went to the boxes and started to fish around for things that could be useful, or even _looked_ useful. Tails then came over, carrying over some items, Sonic merely snickered, and Silver looked slightly embarrassed.

Tails knelled down on the floor, looking at the few panels, then looked at Silver. "Could you help me? I don't know about any of this technology." Silver nodded. Using his powers he pulled off a panel then placed it against a wall, and knelled down with Tails. They spend some time working on fixing the table before Tails began to ask him questions. "Silver, how do you know that this place is here? Wouldn't have this timeline changed when you transported us here?"

Silver glanced from the wires to Tails. "Uh, yeah you're right. This place is always here, I don't know why but it just is." Silver took a wire and plugged it into a socket, "I guess that this place predates everything which is why its always here. I like it here anyway, its really nice, plus there's heat." Tails giggled a little bit as his focus returned to fixing the table. Silver gave a mental sigh, either all of this could go really well, or everything about time was going to change, and he _really_ didn't want to have to kill anybody anymore.

**EDIT 3-19-16:** Minor grammatical changes, added detail, and dialogue/narration fixes and additions to fill in plot holes


	2. earth city

Silver trudged through the snow along with Sonic and Tails. Sonic was yawning to himself, but was content seeing as how he had a jacket on to combat the cold. "How far is this city? I don't see any buildings around."

Looking back Silver shouted, "Not that far. It's just up ahead." Two cliffs were on either side of the group. From the cliffs sometimes hung metal, occasionally another Mobian would be walking, and they would pass them by. Sometimes they waved, sometimes they didn't. It was obvious they were more concerned with the cold than with others. But they went on their journey. Snow continued to fall from the sky, and clouds stood above in the air, grey and white.

"Silv, you did say this was one of the largest cities on the planet. How large is it exactly?" Sonic looked around still finding no signs of a city.

A chuckle escaped Silver, "Well, if nothing has changed, then it'll still be the third largest city in the world." Sonic and Tails looked confused, "I won't say much, but it'll be a surprise." The fox and the hedgehog looked at each other for a few minutes, still confused over what Silver was babbling about.

"Are you sure this place is even here still? I mean, with us being here and all..." Sonic trailed off as he folded his arms.

"That _is_ a possibility," Silver paused as he seemed to look at nothing in particular for a little bit. "I'm sure everything will be fine."

Soon enough a cave came into view and the three of them entered. The cave was made of ice and deep within it appeared as if there was metal pillars holding the structure together. It went on for a mile until the ice turned into metal. Sonic and Tails looked around everywhere, obviously confused as to how this place was one of the largest cities in the world. The corridor that they were in was about 30 meters wide, and there were some other Mobians walking around, occasionally a few humans would also walk by. Sometimes a group of Humans wearing vests and holding guns walked past, and sometimes it was a group of Mobians. No one cared to stop Sonic, Tails, or Silver, seeing as how they looked the same as any other passerby would look.

The corridor was made of a grey metal. On the ceiling were lights that shown dimly. Occasionally there would be a television screen on the wall with the weather forecast for outside, or it would have the news of what was going on around inside. For every quarter mile that they passed one there was a stream of blue light coming from the ground and entering into the ceiling against the walls on each side. Tails looked at it for some time, but made no comment on it. Security seemed to be more tight than usual due to the airing of Eggman speech. Granted, Silver got lost a few times. Although he acted as nothing has changed, there were plenty of differences than he was use to. There were new corridors, and the technology was slightly less advanced than it should be (which wasn't _too_ odd but it still troubled the hedgehog). There was one or two times where he had to ask for directions which was extremely embarrassing. He could hear Sonic's laughter and it made the albino blush. Soon enough the corridor made it to a large, circular room. There was a small circular platform in the middle with some Mobians and Humans standing on it. The group walked onto it and waited too for something to happen. Tails and Sonic stood there awkwardly, waiting for anything to happen. It wasn't until a few minutes later that a Mobian came by the outer edge of the platform. Suddenly a hologram appeared before them, they typed in a few things, and the platform began to descend deeper into the earth.

About a minute passed until they reached a smaller room that led into a smaller corridor. It was about 15 meters wide, but it looked exactly the same as the other corridor, be it smaller. The group headed off once again, still confused as to what was going on. Eventually they made it to a door that looked similar to the door at Silver's home only it was a lot bigger.

Sonic, once again, looked around. "Silver, are you positive this is a city? It looks more like a maze."

Silver sighed. "Yeah, but no one usually comes here since it's so cold, and no one cares to leave either." Silver motioned Sonic and Tails to go in first and the door automatically opened as soon as they got near. As it opened steam came from the sides and revealed what was behind.

Tails and Sonic stood there gawking at the city. They were standing on a ledge made of ice. The drop down went down for miles and miles. Before them was the largest city that they have ever seen. It was like a cavern, made wholly of ice. On the ceiling of the cavern was a large circular device. It was hard to tell how big it was, but it was large enough to take up about 1/3 of the ceiling. It laid in the very middle of the ceiling, and it was circular. It looked like a giant generator. Blue liquid and light pulsed through it. Four separate giant chains each were attached to the generator. The chains were attached to a structure that was within the walls of the cavern. Below was the city. In the center of the giant cavern were huge metallic buildings. Most reached up only half way to the ceiling, however quite a few reached 2/3 to the ceiling, and one almost touched the generator that was sitting atop. From the ledge they saw, integrated into the ice, were smaller ledges. On the ledges sat houses where the people lived. Who knew how many ledges there were. Looking to the left one saw that the cavern even continued onward. There was a small tunnel, perhaps a mile tall, that led to even more buildings. Silver was even caught in the moment. Everything was different than he had expected. In his usual time there were no large buildings, in fact there were barely any large buildings at all. The city looked so much bigger than he remembered, and different. There were some similarities, although they were very little and the only thing that held true to his time was the generator that hung atop of the cavern, even still it looked different.

It was almost impossible to keep Tails from running off, and it was almost even more impossible to keep Sonic from exploring every mile of city. Granted, Silver managed to keep the two in check. Besides, Silver only needed a few things, food, power cells, and to get rid of some junk he had in his house. Which he could manage to get it all done fairly easy. Yet it was that Silver knew that the two wouldn't want to leave so soon. Again, Silver did get lost often on, asking some of the civilians that lived there were he could sell some of his junk, and often he had to stop to look around to figure out if he was going the right way. Silver could have sworn that Sonic made off to explore the city everytime he was lost.

Tails pointed toward the generator and asked, "What does that generator do?"

Silver looked at it. "Its an anti-gravity generator, it keeps the floor above from falling in on itself."

Tails looked at it for some time, "Are all cities underground?" The fox looked at Silver.

The hedgehog shrugged, "It depends on what city. The larger ones are underground, but the smaller ones are on the surface. Of course that could be wrong since the city is entirely different than I remembered." They walked on, occasionally talking to each other, asking Silver questions about his time. If he deemed the information unimportant, he told them, but if it was something that would change his present if he did send them back, then he kept the information to himself.

As they reached a store, Sonic commented, "Man, it's gonna be impossible to find anyone in this big city."

"Actually..." Silver turned his head slightly toward Sonic. "It wouldn't be too hard. All we have to do is watch the news. Knowing your friends they're gonna be really confused as to where they're at and cause trouble. Besides, it'll be easy to find that Echidna."

"Why's that?" asked Tails.

"Well, he was the last Echidna in your time, right? So that means they're extinct now." They entered the store, bought what they needed, and left to find whatever else that was on Silver's shopping list. Sonic had to hold the heaviest of items. They walked around a small area of the city, not wanting to walk to far away from the exit in fear that it would take them until midnight to get home and that they would get terribly lost. However, they had no issue in resting in the nearby parks. Sonic rubbed his hands together, still feeling cold.

All of their ears seemed to perk up at the noise of a nearby group. They were talking about something that seemed to spark all their interests:

"Hey did you hear, Eggman is going to attack the city." Came one voice.

They heard another voice, "Hey wasn't Eggman that one guy who suddenly disappeared along with Sonic and the other famous heroes?" Sonic's ear turned ever so slightly upon hearing that.

"Yeah. Isn't that weird or what? Maybe there was some worm hole. I call a conspiracy though. How much you wanna bet that there are conspiracy theories on it right now?"

"I call bull. It _has_ to be some crazy villain pulling on everyone's tail." There was a pause. "But you know, if it is Eggman, how much you wanna bet that the other guys are here as well. Now that'll be creepy."

The voices died down after that, probably because they had walked away from the area. Still, the information that they had gotten was quite helpful, be that it was a little too convenient. Sonic smiled to himself though. "Well that was convenient. I guess we should hang around here more and wait till that egg head shows up." Casually, Sonic placed his arms behind his back, reclining on the bench.

Silver looked back at Sonic, a frown spreading across his face. "They're only rumors. We don't know if anything is going to happen. Besides, I doubt the police force will allow Eggman to attack this city." He turned away from Sonic and looked at the ceiling, something hit him. "Wait, if Eggman never existed between the time I transported you all from the past, that means Nega doesn't exist." It took some time for Silver to process this in his head.

Tails was lucky enough to snap him out of it. "I suggest that we wait around the city for an hour or two." Silver looked over at Tails, gave a small sigh, and agreed. They walked around the city more, sometimes asking people if they saw a 'strangely similar looking echidna-like Mobian walk by', or someone that looked mysterious. They either shook their head, described someone entirely different as to whom they were looking for, or waved them off. One person, however, did describe someone that did sound like one of Sonic's friends, but upon arriving on the scene it was just someone who happened to look like an echidna (it just happened to be a red female hedgehog with really long quills).

After about an hours search, Silver stretched his arms in the air and yawned. "I think we should be getting back home. I don't think anything is going to happen and I'm getting a little hungry."

Sonic looked back towards Silver. "I can handle myself in this city, you guys can head back." Silver gave Sonic a look, not willing to let him out to make trouble. "You know, knowing Knuckles, I bet you he's gonna be in the sewers." Not even a few minutes later a loud explosion was heard from the opposite end of the city. Everyone looked around, and soon smoke was rising into the ceiling of the cavern. That, itself, was a danger. "I guess that egghead finally came to play." Sonic looked back at Tails. "Come on Tails, we got some eggs to mix." At that, Tails nodded his head. He flew up to one of the rooftops, holding Sonic in his hands. Silver followed after, floating to a rooftop to see what the damage was. The police force was already on their way to deal with whatever had caused the destruction, however they were more worried about the smoke than the actual issue.

Sonic rushed toward the destruction, and Tails went after Sonic, leaving Silver trying to catch up to the two, floating right by as Sonic made his way over the buildings. Looking toward the ground, the police forced was trying their hardest to keep everyone calm. The closer it was to the destruction, the more panic everyone was in. The ledge in which Eggman had entered through was another city gate about a few miles away from the one that the group of heroes entered through. From the smoke was a large robot, made from both the technology from the past, and from the technology of the present. It stood on two legs and had two arms and hands. It looked very humanoid, however it didn't really have a body and looked as if it was put together in a hurry. Eggman was floating within his own contraption, hand against his face with a utmost bored expression.

In a blind rage, Silver broke off a piece of ice from the cavern and threw it at Eggman with his powers. It missed, just barely, however it forced Eggman from his apparent trance. He looked down to see the heroes, standing there. Sonic had a smirk on his face, whilst everyone else was frowning. "I guess I wasn't the only one who was caught in that time rift," Eggman spoke, more to himself than anything.

Before Sonic could speak, Silver shouted. "What do you want Eggman?"

At this Eggman started to laugh. "Why, to rule the world of course! Plus this technology can help me harness the chaos emeralds power and finally get rid of you all!"

Silver scowled, "Why can't we work together? I want to fix this mess I made, and you all want to get home anyway. It would be easier!" Although it was the most reasonable thing to say, everyone started to glare at Silver. Eggman merely started to laugh as if there was no tomorrow. The albino was not pleased, and he started to growl at the Human.

Just as he was about to raise his arm up to rip another piece of ice from the cavern and fling it at Eggman, Sonic stopped him. "Silver, calm down." The white hedgehog lowered his arms, his powers fading away. Sonic directed his attention toward Eggman, "You know, Eggman, Silv does make a good point, plus we all know how this is gonna end. But I guess you don't want to put that empty skull of yours to work, so I'll just save the day as usual" The blue blur clenched his fist, a smirk growing.

Eggman made some grumbling noises. "Go, E-Prototype!" The robot, once again, came to life, but before it could make a move, Silver impaled it with a long piece of ice that he managed to pry off of the ice wall. Sonic made a low pitched whistle, and Eggman was left gawking at the destroyed robot. The robot keeled over then hit the ground and fully shut down. The Doctor's attention turned toward Silver, who was floating above the ground.

Before anyone could comment, Silver pointed at Eggman. "If you get in my way, or dare attempt to ruin this timeline, I'll be sure to stop you!" He clenched his fists, a green aura surrounding the hedgehog.

"We'll just see about that." Eggman turned his own machine around, and fled from the way he came. The white hedgehog relaxed himself, and set his feet down upon the ground looking at Sonic who just nodded at Silver. The victory didn't go celebrated though, as the police force soon arrived, and aimed their guns at the group. They were garbed in black, some of them having a cloth covering their mouths. Sonic placed his hands on his hips, leaning to the left.

Eventually one of the policeman shouted from the line: "Put your hands above your head and lay down on the ground!"

The blue blur grinned even wider. "Does the police force always greet your heroes this way, Silv? Can't you do something. This is _your_ time after all." Sonic glanced back at Silver, who was practically ready to throw a scrap metal at Sonic's head for making such a jab at him.

"Hey, stop talking!" Shouted one of the gunman.

"Jeez, you all call this some celebration? You guys are ruinin' the fun, I'm out of here." Sonic turned back and gave a wink to Silver and Tails. The blur turned back and zoomed off, drawing the attention to the gunman, allowing Silver and Tails to have a chance at a escape.

**UPDATE 3-19-16** : minor grammatical fixes and dialogue added to fix potential plot holes


	3. bounties

Although Sonic was helpful enough to divert the attention toward him, running slow enough to keep the police force on his tail, but fast enough to mock them, Silver and Tails were still in a tight spot. The chaos Sonic created thanks to his quick feet was enough for Silver to lead Tails away from the fighting and make a run, or rather fly, for freedom, however one of the soldiers noticed the two of them running, and made a comment to chase them. The chase didn't last long though. The buildings that flooded the area made for a quick getaway and Tails and Silver managed to make it to the surface without too much trouble. Both of them agreed that Sonic would be able to handle himself as it was in his nature to run. The two Mobians exhausted, they headed for home with the few supplies they managed to hold onto (which was a decent amount of food, some money, and power cells). Tails and Silver spoke to each other sparingly as they walked to Silver's home. It was obvious that Silver was deeply troubled by Eggman, but more so deeply troubled by the fact that it was his fault that this had happened. A future he wished to saved once again doomed by his recklessness.

Sonic had came back to Silver's house while the two were napping and it was obvious that he had went around exploring the city. Silver was about to bicker with him over it, yet he let it go knowing he was already causing enough trouble. With a sigh, he got up and went to work on fixing his house to create a stable home for the three and a steady base if anything were to happen.

Tails sat by Silver as he went about fixing the place. "Silver I have a question." The white hedgehog fumbled around with some wires before answered the fox.

"Hmm...?"

"Well, I was wondering why you're still alive." The sudden question made Silver pause his fumbling and the fox became quite flustered. "I-I mean! Don't take it the wrong way! But i-it's just that… When we were teleported here it would have altered the whole timeline, right? You're parents wouldn't be alive, therefore you wouldn't exist."

There was a long pause, and Silver's eyes slightly becoming watery. Yet the hedgehog soon began fumbling around with the wires again answering the other. "I'm not affected by time. Well I'm not immortal or anything like that, at least I don't think I am, but I guess you can say I don't really exist. The only place I exist is in the past, not in the present nor the future." After he finished with the wires he closed the small metal case and patted his hands on his legs. "It's sort of upsetting but I don't care all that much." The hedgehog looked at Tails and gave a bright smile, "I mean, even if I don't exist, at least I know that I'm saving someone's future." Silver usually tried to ignore that very big fact and always made a lesser deal out of it than usual. It did bother him that he could never interact with his parents but he was thankful that he had friends at least.

The fox smiled back at Silver, but yet in the back of that smile was some sort of pity. To Tails, he knew what it was like not to grow up with any parental guidance having only Sonic to follow. It was a rather difficult time for him, but it made Tails glad that Silver was taking it rather well. It had been a couple hours since Silver and Tails had started to fix up the house. Sonic was found watching the news nonchalantly. It was a report on the recent attack that happened in the city, it made the news worldwide and it gave details about the "supposed Eggman" attacking the city. The lizard reported the basic story then said the generic "(insert name here) has more".

Naturally, the whole group listened to the story. Pans of the destruction that happened in the city aired on the screen, rubble and the disabled robot that Silver had impaled. By the time the shot was recorded the ice had melted, however electricity still surged through the thing. _"At 12:30 this afternoon all was well in the streets of Alcor. People were making their routinely errands until there was a breech in city gate 12B. A man claiming to be the infamous Doctor Eggman from 2063 threatened to take over the city if he didn't get what he wanted. As quick as Doctor Eggman breached the city, three mysterious figures crossed and dealt with him. Some witnesses say that it was Sonic the Hedgehog and Miles 'Tails' Prower."_ The camera focused in on some civilians who gave their accounts. All generic stories of things that the group already knew.

_"__There was a huge explosion and ice was flying everywhere. If it weren't for those heroes I would probably been a goner." "I saw it with my very two eyes! Sonic the Hedgehog in the flesh! The stories are true, he is the fastest thing alive!" "That white hedgehog knocked that robot out like it was nothing! He didn't even touch it and it fell."_

The camera panned back to the damage. _"Although the police are grateful that those three came to the rescue, they are searching for any and all information that might lead to their capture. Police are not explaining why, however they claim it is for the greater good. Citizens, however, aren't happy-."_

Sonic gave a small scoff and rolled his eyes at the news. He could think of a million reasons why they wanted to capture them but he kept his mouth shut for now. Silver, on the other hand, looked rather upset at the news and was disappointed that they were found out so quick. Then again, it would be hard not to keep silent while Eggman was around and trying to ruin everyone's day. When it came to hiding themselves, however, it would be difficult. Sonic didn't stand out that much as there were quite a bit of hedgehogs that had blue fur, it wasn't all that uncommon anymore, however Tails stood out due to his two tails. As for Silver, the police would arrest him on sight, there were rarely any hedgehogs that had his fur color. Tails had a look of concern, Sonic didn't seem to care that much, however he was still paying close attention to the news probably hoping to find Knuckles or any chaos emeralds.

Before Silver could comment on the news, everyone's ears perked up suddenly. _"Even stranger today with the heroes of the past, people have reported seeing a red Echidna tagging along with a with an unknown person. Police have yet to get more details however they say to report them immediately as they believe them to be connected to the return of Sonic and Miles. Their last known location was in New Proxima."_

At that Sonic gave a small smile. He looked towards Silver who was still processing this information. "How far is it to New Proxima?" Silver looked at Sonic for a bit as he tried to recollect any information he had on his future. The name didn't ring any bells and he walked over to the table to search it. Luckily, with Tails help, they had managed to hook up his home to the internet through some hacking and simple coding rewrites. Silver didn't like it that they were basically stealing but it couldn't be helped given their situation.

"I can't really tell you how far away it is from here, but I can tell you how _high_ it is." Silver turned from the table to Sonic and Tails who were looking at him as if he had eaten a worm in front of them.

"Come on Silver, be real with us here. Are you telling us that there's a city floating in the sky?" Yet Silver nodded with a very serious expression. "Well how do we get there?"

Silver shrugged, "It says that there's planes and stuff that transport people and goods there, but seeing as we're wanted I don't think we can get there that easily. I mean, I could probably float up there and drag you guys along, but the wind can get pretty bad here." Tails frowned. "Besides, I doubt the Rogues up there would allow us passage, they're very secretive."

"Rogues?" both the two simultaneously asked.

Silver nodded. "They're descendants of the Babylonians." He turned back to the hologram with all the information on there studying it carefully. "I don't know if its true, but it says that they claim to be decedents from the Babylonians. They're a group of avians that decided to come together under their history and form what's now New Proxima. They're pretty religious people now too." Silver paused for a second, "Interesting." He began to scroll through the page skimming through the information that the wiki came up with.

Sonic smirked, "Well if they are descendants of the Babylonians then I'm sure they'll be ecstatic to know I'm around." Silver turned from the information and looked at Sonic funny. He tapped something on the table so the little page closed and leaned against the table still giving a rather suspicious look.

"What do you mean they're gonna be ecstatic with you being here?" Silver asked as Sonic got up from the couch. "I mean, I know that you're a Extreme Gear Rider and all, but I'm not even that sure that they care about that stuff anymore." His eyes followed him as Sonic went over to the box and picked up a random part within. He began throwing it up in the air and catching it as Silver went on. "Besides, we're _wanted_."

Sonic shrugged, "Knowing them they're still probably into it. Also since they're decedents from the Babylonians they probably don't follow the flow of the government." Sonic looked toward Tails, "Tails. Do you think you can make a board with all the junk laying around? I know it's a lot to ask…"

Tails shook his head, "I should have more than enough tools and materials here to make something. With all this advance technology, I can make a board better than your current one! I can probably even make one for us too." Tails looked at Silver, "I need your help again, with the technology."

Silver turned to Tails and smiled "I'll help you." He turned towards Sonic, "I hope you know what you're doing." With that, Tails and Silver went on their way in making the gear whilst Sonic spent his time playing around with the hologram table.

**UPDATE 3-19-16 :** Easier reading for your viewing pleasure. Fixed dialogue and fixed plot holes


	4. catch me

Shadow crossed his arms over his chest as he listened to a G.U.N Soldier brief him on a most simple mission: Find Sonic and Dr. Eggman. As odd and absurd as it might have sounded at first, Shadow was really the most capable person in finding him, well aside from Amy. It had been a couple of weeks too long since Sonic and co had disappeared without so much as a clue, not to mention there was no mention of any chaos emeralds around. It was weird, and to be fair, it was disturbing, even to Shadow's standards. The hedgehog didn't think much of it really. However, it was fishy to know that Sonic has been gone for so long without so much a word. Normally he would be rubbing himself all over the place, knowing him.

Internally, Shadow scoffed as he listened to the soldier. It was apparent that Sonic had disappeared along side some strange white hedgehog. His ears perked up at that. If anything that strange white hedgehog had to be Silver, besides, that was the only white hedgehog that both Shadow and Sonic knew, so the idea wasn't farfetched. As he left the briefing room, the black hedgehog pondered on the possibilities as to where they had gone. It couldn't be possible that they were mixed up in some time traveling shenanigans, Silver was too careful. Then again he was but a child.

Shadow sighed. For once in his life he was actually tempted to ask for help on this one. Sonic's mind was but an enigma, and Silver's mind ever more so. The only person that actually knew Sonic aside from Tails and Knuckles was Amy (granted he wasn't just about to go and ask her, oh never, his pride wouldn't let him). His last resort was Team Chaotix, but even still their investigations were quite... unprofessional. Best that he went to the last place they were seen himself.

* * *

Shadow nonchalantly kicked over a piece of metal that still remained from the fight that Sonic had with Dr. Eggman. There was really nothing to note however Shadow did notice that it did feel a little chilly in the area. "Hmmm…" Crouching down he turned over another piece of metal. It was freezing cold as if it had been sitting in the snow for days. He held the piece in his hands wondering if it was some sort of new technology that Eggman had managed to create, however it didn't seem that way as the metal was able to bend normally like any type of metal, it was just cold. Shadow threw the scrap metal toward some other place and stood upright. He was about to turn the other way until he heard a feminine voice give a short shout of pain. Without even second guessing, Shadow shouted, "Yes Amy?" It wasn't rocket science that Amy would be looking for Sonic.

"Oh, Shadow!" The pink hedgehog ran up to the other one, her hands covered in dirt. "I didn't think you would be here. Are you looking for Sonic too?"

The older one crossed his arms and closed his eyes, "I'm only on a mission." It was typical of him to not outright tell the other that he was looking for the blue blur, be that it may indirectly. Amy puffed her cheeks up slightly, then turned to look at the mess. The place was pretty deserted, however among the scraps of metal was a small circle where there was an absence of anything and everything but grass and dirt. It was something like a dead zone. "Amy, do you know anything about what had happened before Sonic's disappearance?"

Amy looked at Shadow, then looked back at the rubble. "Not much, but I remember seeing Silver here." Amy placed a finger on her lips deep in thought, "Do you think it's Silver's fault that this happened?"

She cocked her head as Shadow unfolded his hands. "Possibly," was a simple answer. His curiosity was diverted toward the circle that no rubble was present. "Odd…" Upon saying that he made his way towards the outer rim of the circle with Amy trailing behind him in curiosity of his curiously.

Shadow and Amy stood at the very outer circle of the dead zone. They could feel a coldness like nothing that they had ever felt before. Shadow wasn't that phased by it, however Amy curled her hands together and attempted to create heat. "Geez, what is up with this weather?"

The black hedgehog shook his head, "It's not the weather." He turned around away from Amy and walked away.

"What do you mean it's not the wea- Woah!" Barely missing her was a long piece of iron that was flung out to the dead zone. Shadow dusted off his hands as Amy became angered at him. "Hey you could at least tell me when you're going to fling something near me, or maybe even be more careful next time!" Shadow didn't respond. "Hmph, some Ultimate Lifeform you are!" She swung her head away from the other, her eyes closed and arms folded.

"Just as I thought," came a murmur. Amy opened one of her eyes to see the iron slowly fading away in a array of colors.

"W-What?"

"It seems that Sonic and everyone managed to open up some sort of time traveling portal," Shadow observed the circle carefully. He kicked a rock or two in there seeing if those two would disappear, and they did. They needed to shut this area off and quickly.

"Wait, do you mean they time traveled!?" Amy turned around toward Shadow as Shadow started to walk away.

Shadow turned his head toward her slightly, "Simply. Silver must have done something to send them somewhere. They could be in the past or the future for all we know."

"B-But how are things still managing to time travel!? You threw that iron in there, it should still be there right?" Amy held her two hands close to her chest, worry spreading on her face.

"I can sense that there's chaos energy here, and a lot of it. Silver must have borrowed some energy from the Chaos Emeralds and that must have sent everything in the vicinity to wherever Silver was trying to go, or to some random point of time. The energy that Silver borrowed was probably too much and it's still lingering." Shadow shrugged. "We need to close this area off, who knows how many people accidentally managed to get caught in that." He pointed toward the dead zone.

Amy looked back at the empty patch of grass, "We need to go and save them!" She looked at Shadow with a quite serious look. "I'm serious Shadow!"

Shadow took it as a jest however and scoffed at her, "Go ahead, but without proper research or even help I don't think there's a way to save-" Amy took a calm step toward the dead zone. "Amy!" The pink hedgehog turned toward the black one, frightened by his voice. However it created a chain reaction and made her slip on a piece of rubble and fall toward the dead zone. Shadow tried to chase after her but also manage to trip and fall over another stray metalwork. They found themselves in the center of the dead zone, slowly disappearing in an arrange of colors.

**UPDATE 3-19-16** : Easier reading for your viewing pleasure


	5. mysteries abound

The gang made their way carefully through the snow on their hover boards. It had taken a few days to make them, however nothing had proved too difficult for the fox genius. It had only taken a few hours but soon enough Tails had managed to learn just enough of Silver's technology that he had no longer needed the white hedgehog's help. Much to Silver's worry, the albino was finally allowed some rest with all that was going on. The boards run smoothly, as if they were walking on air itself. A bird would even be so jealous to see them running with so much grace. It had taken Silver some time to become use to the boards as it was quite some time since he had last been on one, same with Tails, but with Sonic it had seemed he was born to run on them. It was quite amusing to watch the blue hedgehog ride so gracefully along the wind. If one didn't know better, one would have thought he was a bird.

Yet their happiness was ended short as their attention was soon turned upward toward the floating sky city. From the ground it didn't look much at all, a floating rock with chains hanging down (Sonic had commented that it looked like a floating plate with noodles hanging from it; Silver laughed). There was little that the group could make out from below, large spirals reaching towards the heavens, some sort of garden, and little else. Silver had commented it looked much different from his timeline, yet didn't think much of it, yet the hedgehog was still very wary as it seemed that things had changed since last night, however he thought that it was only his imagination.

They made it very beneath the structure, under an open field where snow had started to fall. Silver looked upward, the sun was obscured by the city, it seemed like it was a very cloudy day from beneath. "Sooo…." Sonic started, "How do we get up there exactly?" Sonic looked around dumbly.

Silver pointed toward a large chain that was closest to the ground, perhaps a mile or so from it. "There. I can carry you up and we can ride up the chain. The hover boards should have enough energy to push us straight up." There was a pause as the hedgehog reclined his arm back to his side. "Someone is probably gonna stop us before we hit the city, are you sure you have a plan at convincing them that you're 'legendary'?"

Sonic shook his head with a smirk, "What Silv, you don't trust me." The white hedgehog gave him a blank look. "It'll be fine, anyway if they are descendants of the Babylonians I'm sure that they'll know who Jet is, and if they know Jet, they'll know me."

Shaking his head, Silver raised his hand in submit, however he wasn't so amused by Sonic's answer. "Alright, I guess we should get going."

* * *

Although the wind wasn't so strong, it was rather difficult to usually come into contact with someone, and even more difficult to convince them that they were who they had made them out to be. Luckily enough, one of the patrolling officers had managed to recognize Sonic as "that scrawny hedgehog that managed to beat jet the hawk like 6 times." Silver found it amusing, Sonic didn't. Yet they were led into the city, however limited only to a few buildings and not allowed to certain areas. It seemed that the Babylonians didn't really care that The Sonic the Hedgehog had appeared at their doorsteps, neither did they care that there was time traveling involved. At least, the only Babylonians that didn't care were the police force. It was obvious they didn't take kindly to visitors.

The police force were garbed in an outfit that covered the most of their body, in fact most, if not all Babylonians actually covered their body with either tight dull clothes or wavy colorful clothing. They didn't show much of their feathers, and those that did were higher officials (at least that's what it looked). Sonic asked about it, yet Silver shrugged and gave a simple "I 'unno."

Sonic commented that Silver was a "terrible tour guide". One of the Babylonians that heard snickered in the background.

They were stuck in a plain room with some other random mobians and humans were sitting. Sonic was getting twitchy, and Silver nervous. Tails just sat and waited. Eventually a Babylonian garbed in fine armor appeared. The feathers on their arms were a purple-blue, and their head was a dark green. The feathers atop of their head that appeared to be 'hair' reached all the way down to their shoulders, however the face of the person was obscure by a golden visor. It was impossible to make out their breed, as it was impossible to make out their gender or really anything. The only notable features they had was tattoos on their arms that appeared much like flames (similar to Jet's) and the color of their feathers. Everything else was pretty much obscured by clothing. Sonic was the first to comment on the Babylonian that walked in: "Some party we missed out on? Sorry for being late but our tour guide must have taken us the wrong way." Silver started fuming.

The surrounding mobians and humans that were within the room had their jaws agape. This was obviously someone that no one should talk like that to. Sonic obviously could care a bit less, yet when he saw everyone's reaction he sort of frowned a bit and blushed rather embarrassed. Yet the bird gave a giggle and a laugh and waved at them to come hither and they left the room. Sonic could have sworn he heard them say: "This guy has to be the one that my great-grandfather had raced." The group walked in silence to the other room (well almost if Sonic hadn't stopped commenting on the place and if the bird couldn't stop giggling). Never did they see outside, but they were allowed to recline and relax in a fine room.

As the Babylonian sat down, Silver ran straight to the point: "So, you're not freaked out that they're from the past." The Babylonian shook their head.

"Well, yes. I mean, it affected this timeline, did it not?" Silver nodded. "But I mean, it's an honor that I get the chance to meet Sonic. I've always wanted to meet the one who's raced against my great-grandfather and won."

Sonic tilted his head. "You're great-grandfather?"

The Babylonian nodded, "Yes! Well, technically my great-great-great-great-and-so-on-grandfather. Oh, forgive me, where are my manners? My name is Heim. I'm the descendant of Jet, I'm sure you know him." Sonic and Tails almost choked on their own spit. "Something wrong?"

Sonic regained his composure quickly, "N-No. I just never expected to meet one of my rival's grandkid!" Silver really wasn't happy with the idea that they were meeting the grandchildren of people in the past, but it couldn't be helped, and anyway when they're sent back it wouldn't make much of a difference. "It makes me wonder if anyone else has any kids. Just the thought of Shadow having a kid is making me queasy..."

Silver laughed nervously, "Yeah it's kinda weird when you get to meet the descendants of your friends but it can't be helped." It was easy to tell that Silver had done this more than enough times than he can count. The descendant of Sonic, Amy, Tails, even Rouge. It sure was something. Sonic looked over at him, and just as he was about to open his mouth to ask the obvious question Silver interrupted, "So uh yeah… We're looking for an echidna, the news said that he was in this area."

Heim nodded slowly, "I guess he's apart of your little group? Yes we've seen an Echidna walk around this area, but we can never seem to catch him. They say he's followed by an unknown figure." Heim placed a hand under their chin and looked out toward the distance. "I suppose I can let you all pass into the other districts, I'm sure that the government would frown on my actions but it can't be helped." Sonic gave the other a confused look, "Oh! Sorry for my rambling. You see I am in charge of a section of the police force that takes care of intruders." Silver nodded quite thoughtfully while Sonic placed his arms behind his back.

"I'm sure it shouldn't be too hard to find an Echidna here…" the blue hedgehog murmured. Heim meekly laughed, a frown spreading their face. "Huh, what is it?"

"No, nothing. I suppose it shouldn't be. I'll give you some passports and documents to say you're on official business under the Babylonian Republic. But please, do be careful." With that Heim got up and left the room leaving the group to their own selves to talk.

* * *

Silver, Sonic, and Tails left the building with a necklace on them. It had a white silver card attached to it along with a feather. The group guessed that the color of the feather meant something important however they never really cared to ask. When they left the building they could see the sky, as it turns out it had turned to night. They all expected the city to be made out of metal, however it turns out the city was made out of mud and rocks, much like how Babylonian Gardens looked like. Pulses of streaming blue ran through the buildings' cracks, and assortments of fabrics laid outside. It looked like they were somewhere in the middle east, and it was quite a change to Silver's home Alcor. Sonic liked the natural look the city gave off, and Silver was quite mystified by it as it was his first time allowed in the city. Lush gardens covered every corner, and flowers of all types fell into the streets. Vines wrapped themselves all around buildings which made everything look more ancient. Babylonians of all types walked the streets, their faces covered with cloth, and even some whose faces were not. Heim had told them that it was a cultural thing that they had done to imitate what genies look like, however the group didn't question it all too much.

The sky looked beautiful. Although the artificial light obscured the sky a little, they could still see every twinkling star. The moon laid there too, it's glory to pieces, and only half of it showing. There came a dark beauty from it. Tails and Sonic left with a dark feeling in their mouths after seeing the moon. They walked on.

The city wasn't large, and Silver didn't chastise Sonic every time he ran off to do his own little thing. In fact, Silver didn't do much to stop Sonic from running off. He allowed it freely seeing as how it would help in finding Knuckles. They managed to scour every inch of the higher levels, but soon found it that there was nothing here. So they went to the lower levels, deep within the city. At first the guards would not allow it, saying that the area within was sacred, however after checking and rechecking the documents, and Silver arguing with the guards, they were allowed in unknown that the area they were entering was, indeed, sacred.


	6. warming life

Inside the inner section of New Proxima was nothing special that the gang could see. It looked quite the same as Babylon from when Sonic had stopped the destruction of Earth. The technology was far beyond Sonic's present's technology, but yet up to par with the future's, even if by a little. The corridor that they orginally had entered in was long and narrow and illuminated a dark hue of blue, completely contrasting Silver's cyan that emitted from his bracelets. A young fox stared around the hallway, finding it somewhat similar to the hallway when Silver led the two to Alcor. The only difference was that the hallway was dark and barely lit. He firgured that there was some inspiration taken from the Babylonians. The albino, on the other hand, was a little freaked over the fact that they were within the inner sanctum of New Proxima. The hedgehog had heard that no one in the world has ever been let within the inner part of the floating city (of course this was from his own timeline, not this one).

Casually, Sonic broke the ice. "Hey Silver, I got a question." The young hedgehog looked at Sonic, then gave a nod of approval and waved his hand in a motion that meant go one. "I was wonderin' about that lab you stay in. How did you know it was there?"

The question caught Silver off guard given the circumstances but he replied, "Oh that? That lab has always been there since I got back from fighting Nega that first time I traveled back in time. Well, usually anyway. Sometimes it's not there, other times it is." Silver gave a shrug, "I just decided to call it home is all."

"Soo... you don't really have a home?" Sonic questioned, not exactly realizing the sensativity to the question.

"Sonic!" Tails chimed in.

"What? It's an honest question."

Silver gave an uncomfortable smile at Sonic, "Oh. Uh.. not really... But..." he rubbed the back of his head searching for the right words. "I never really remembered ever having a home..." Sonic started to mentally curse himself for asking the question. "A-Ah! Hey look at that!" Masterfully avoiding talking about it more, Silver pointed a finger down the hallway. Farther down they could see a structure that ever so changed and spun. The group started to run forward, arriving in a huge circular corridor. In the middle appeared to be a large blue light, two or three halos encircled it spinning around. Occasionally a beam of pure light shot up from below the ball of light, and disappeared within seconds. There was no floor nor ceiling. Looking down was pure darkness, and same as looking upward. There was a platform and some stairs to walk down and up to both lower and higher sections of the inner sanctum of New Proxima. From just looking there appeared to be no other Mobians around, the place looked deserted as if not touched in years- centuries even. The air within held a feeling of wars long forgotten, and authoritiy and power unlike any imaginable. It left the group in silence of this raw power.

Moments later Sonic spoke up, "So... Any idea as to wear to find a enchida?" Silver shrugged.

"Didn't Heim say that there was another travelling with him?" Tails asked. Sonic nodded, "Hmm... I wonder if we can find whoever else is in here besides Knuckles we can find who we're looking for." Tails looked at Sonic, and Sonic shrugged.

"Will making a lot of noise help?" he asked. Silver gave Sonic a look, but before either could answer, Sonic inhaled deeply, and shouted: "HEY ANYONE THERE? YOO-HOO." The voice echoed throughout the whole complex of doors and stairs and whatever else that laid deep within the sanctum. For a few moments it felt like something was going to jump out and kill them, like a Minatour of some sort. After a minute Sonic shrugged his arms, "Looks like the place is pretty much empty."

Almost instantaniously, Silver took the other's shoulders and shook him. "Are you crazy? Who knows what's in here? There could be a monster in here for all we know and—and-!"

"Relax Silver. Nothing is going to-" just as he said that there came a large roar, "-happen." Silver started to shake Sonic more calling him an outright idiot and how he (Silver) didn't want his life to end here and so on. Sonic just stood there taking it and Tails was left sighing with his hand covering his face. "Silver would you just relax? Everything is going to be fine-"

"Everything isn't going to be O.K!" his voice was quite venomous. "I already have to worry about keeping you alive to protect my future, and I already probably screwed over my home already! I don't think anything is going to be fine!" While the two were arguing a figure started to emerge from the shadows the way that the group had entered in.

Tails was the first to speak up, "Hey guys... I think you should turn around." Silver had stopped talking immiedetly upon hearing Tails. Golden eyes wandered to stare at the obscure figure, a hand rising up and glowing with a sick blue aura. Sonic readied himself, and Tails also. From the shadows emerged an avian-like figure. The only difference was that the Mobian wasn't exactly a Mobian so to speak, nor was it exactly living. In fact the only thing that made the other look avian was that it's armor was in a shape like a Babylonian, besides that it appeared like it was fleshless. It was basically walking armor.

"Do you need assistance?" and it talked. At first it was really endearing to find that a walking piece of armor talked, then it became terrifying, and looped all the way around to facinating. Armor that spoke? That definitely wasn't something you heard about everyday, sure robots was one thing but armor? That was a totally different thing and it was so cool. It certainly was something.

Sonic was the first to speak as Tails and Silver were still gawking at the animate armor. "Yeah, we're looking for one of our friends and we think he might be here." The living armor tilted its head, it seemed that it could feel emotion.

"A friend..." the thing pondered. Sonic nodded. The armor motioned downward toward the stairs, signaling them to go down. "If they are of flesh like you, then I may of be assistance in finding your friend." It said the word friend as if it was forgein to itself.

Silver momentarily pulled Sonic to the side and started to whisper to him, "Do you think this is a good idea? I mean we don't know what that thing is!"

Sonic gave a shrug, "Relax.. If it was one of Eggman's baddies then it would have already attacked us."

"He has a point," Tails chimed in.

"Ah.. is there something the problem?" the thing spoke again. It was quite polite really.

"No nothing!" Silver replied hasily. "Alright, alright. I trust you on this." The group turned back to the armor who was standing idly by. Silver had a small smile on his face, however it looked like he was nervous.

The living armor caught onto this, "I see that you are quite shocked to see a living armor speaking." It began to walk, still it talked to the others without looking back. "Do not worry, children. I am the keeper of this place. I make sure that no negative souls enter this area that might want to seal the Babylonian's power for themselves."

"S-So you're like a gaurdian?" the young hedgehog asked.

"Of sorts." It never introduced itself. The question popped up about a few minutes into their walk, however the question was so skillfully evaded that it had taken the group a good 15 minutes to realize that they had never caught it's name. Unspokenly, the group agreed it was best to not ask. About 30 minutes of walking deeper into the complex of systems and corridors, the living armor opened a door to reveal a quite quant living space. It had a chair with a table and a bookshelf filled to the brim with books of yellowed pages. On the said chair sat Knuckles nonchalantly reading a book. His eyes glanced over to the door as it opened, first to the armored being then to Silver, specifically.

To say that Silver wasn't terrified to see Knuckles would be a lie. Those burning eyes looking at him already spelled for disaster. The echidna closed the book, got up from the chair, walked right over to Silver, and grabbed him by the fur giving him the most nasty look that Silver has ever seen in his life. The experience was something that Silver wished to never repeat in his life. "What did you do?"

Before Silver could reply, Sonic chimed in. "Missed you too Knuckles." The echidna breifly looked at Sonic, then back to Silver who was giving his own look of nastiness.

The hedgehog waved his hands in a harmless gesture, "I accidently used the power of the Chaos Emeralds to create a portal to the future and that sucked you and everyone else along with me."

The living armor overheard this and tipped its head to the side quite curious, "Oh? So that would explain many things." Silver looked over to the living armor, "Forgive my intruding but I noticed that your friend here was holding a Chaos Emerald. We've not seen those in hundreds of years along with echidnas themselves. I was curious as to see it here, but I thought it was some mock emerald. I also had thought that he just happened to look like an echidna." The calmness of the other's voice was somehow unsettling.

Knuckles looked at Silver, then let him go quite grudgeingly. He then proceeded to take out a blue Chaos Emerald, "I woke up in this place holding this. Fox there found me and brought me to this place."

"Fox?" the Mobians asked.

"A nickname," Knuckles shrugged. "I spent my time here exploring the place. Fox helped me in recovering my amnesia."

"Amnesia?" Tailed asked.

Silver inturupted, "It's a common side affect from time traveling. I get it from time to time when going back and forth between times. It becomes less frequent everytime you time travel."

"Well you seem to know all about it..." Knuckles commented.

Tails turned to Silver, "How severe is it?"

Silver shrugged, "It... really depends... I lost all my memories from my childhood from when I first time traveled." The hedgehog didn't seem all that disturbed from telling Tails that. At this point Silver thought it was normal not knowing his past. He didn't know his parents anymore, so what is there to miss when they no longer exist? In a way it helped Silver to cope with time traveling, but at the time it sometimes left him with disturbing dreams. "I wouldn't be surprised if you forgot a whole chunk of your life, but let's hope that's not the case." A worried look crossed over Tails face, Silver looked away from the other.

Knuckles broke the ice, "So. How do we get back to our own timeline?"

"We need to gather all the 7 Chaos Emeralds along with the Timestone that was lost when I transported you here."

"Timestone?" Fox asked. "I heard that the only one in existance is at Shamar."

That was useful information actually, "Really?" Silver's voice became a little louder due to excitement. "That makes things a lot easier." He smiled brightly, "Thank you Fox."

Fox nodded slightly, "If you wish, you may all stay to rest here for a night. The journey ahead must be tiring. I do not have beds of the sort but the ground is just as fine." The group of Mobians nodded and started to converse amonst themselves as Fox walked over to the chair.

Before they could continue on with their discussions, Sonic walked over the Fox. "Hey I was wondering who you really are. You don't talk much about yourself."

Fox looked up at Sonic, if the amor had lips they would be smiling. "Some people call me the Enlightened One. But I just fancy to call myself the Keeper of this place."


	7. in gloomy darkness

To be fair, the Mobians didn't exactly know how long they had been asleep for. It had been awhile since any of them had gotten a good rest, even if they were sleeping in uncomfort. Everyone was together, that's really what made it matter. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles were back together, they were in possession with one Chaos Emerald, and Silver knew the location of a Time Stone. Everything was pleasant, it was nice, and it felt like weight had been lifted from everyone's shoulders seeing as how everyone was together. Knowing Knuckles, once everyone had left New Proxima, he would wander off to do his own journey. It was understandable, he was like that, always a drifter, a wanderer, much like Silver himself. The white hedgehog knew that they wouldn't be together for long, but it helped to know that no one was harmed, and it helped more to know that a Chaos Emerald was in possession. Life seemed to be gradually being lifted away into solace once more. The only outstanding issue as of now was finding the rest of the Chaos Emeralds, getting the Time Stone, and dealing with Eggman, or so Sonic and everyone else thought. Silver festered with his own issues, such as the future. It couldn't be helped, but damn did he try his best not to show his worry over it. The best he could manage was a straight face, and a silent prayer to whatever deity there was that once Sonic and his friends returned, that life would return to normal, or at least somewhat normal. The changes that were to come were inevitable, and Silver could live with a few minor or major changes as long as it didn't leave his time to ruin.

Silver knew that the life he lived was fickle and ever so changing. Nothing was ever the same for him, and he liked that. But sometimes he wished that life was set in stone for him, that he could get a nice girl or something and settle down in his future. Yet he knew that was impossible. Knuckles was the first to wake up, he left everyone alone, not wanting to bother anyone. The second that arose was Silver. Both of them didn't talk at all, they both kept silent, both awkward at the situation at hand, so decided best to keep quiet and not utter a sound. Sonic woke up afterwords, then Tails next. Fox was nowhere to be seen, which was odd but the group didn't question it. However as time went on and Fox still did not appear, nervousness started to wash over the group. It helped no better that a low monstrous growl vibrated through the halls.

Knuckles scowled, "Do you think Fox is in trouble?"

Sonic shrugged, "Guess we should go check it out." A grin passed his lips and Sonic headed out of the room. Knuckles followed after leaving Tails and Silver behind.

"You guys, wait!" Tails called out. He ran out of the room with Silver trailing behind him and when he looked down the long and ominous hallway they were gone. "They were just.. there..." Tails looked back at Silver, to which Silver looked back at Tails. "Should we wait here?"

Silver shook his head, "They might be in trouble. We should go look for them." Tails nodded, then looked back down the hallway.

"We should bring our Extreme Gear with." There came a nod, and Silver went back in to grab them. Sonic's gear was floating alongside Silver, it was best to bring along his gear just in case anything would happen. The both of them threw down their gear and jumped on their boards, gliding smoothly across the hallway.

* * *

Surprisingly, Shadow was lost. It really wasn't everyday that someone saw a black hedgehog walking around, let alone one with red markings followed by a pink hedgehog. Most of the people in Shamar stared at the two of them that trudged through the desert. The Ultimate Lifeform was not amused. The beating sun on him made him feel as though his whole body had been set on fire thanks to his dark quills, Amy, on the other hand, felt quite fine.

Shamar didn't look all too different than Shadow had expected it to be. Honestly, he thought it would be full of tech, or the opposite being it would be filled with old run down houses, but in fact it looked quite old and outdated but not too outdated considering the time jump. Unless he had gotten his facts wrong and they hadn't time traveled and merely were just transported to another area, then all seemed to be fine. Amy had the better guts as to ask what year it was to a passing Mobian than Shadow, to which the Mobian gave them a funny look at told them 2982. That seemed to have placed Shadow's worries somewhere else for the time being, he wondered how it was he and Amy were going to get back to their time. Shadow sighed irritably as he kept a fast paced walk with Amy treading behind him yelling at him to wait and slow down. Shadow simply was not in the mood for either her silly antics and her complaining (in fact he was just about ready to run off to somewhere where he can find some peace and information, working with someone who wasn't Rouge or Omega simply wasn't his forte). The only thing that kept him from doing so was the fact that he didn't want her to possibly do anything too serious and, perhaps, screw up the future for Silver (anyway he wasn't too sure how time travel worked and the affects of it). A mental note was made to ask Silver about that later, if ever.

"Shadow could you walk any faster?" shouted Amy from behind.

"Yes," came a reply. He really wasn't in the mood for this. Anyway there was one thing that Shadow was looking for and one thing only: a newspaper or anything similar. Knowing Sonic, they probably would have made headlines the first day coming here. Luckily, he found a newsstand not too much later with the headlines "Blue Blur Returns". Shadow wasn't shocked at all, Amy was.

Amy took the paper and read it quite religiously, "Sonic the Hedgehog found in Holoska in the city… Alcor?" Shadow read over her shoulder, the city Alcor budged no memory. Last time the both of them knew, there wasn't even that much of a city in Holoska. It must have been built in the distant future. "Last seen headed for the floating city New Proxima?" Again, another city that both were unfamiliar with.

Without missing a beat, Shadow turned to the newsstand tender and asked the most simple question of them all: "Where's New Proxima at the moment?" If it was a floating city, chances were that it wasn't stationary.

The Human behind the counter looked up from his smartphone, "Oh uh.. hold on a second…" He tapped in some stuff on his smartphone, swiped his finger across the screen a few times, until he gave his answer. "Right now in the southern part of Holoska by Sanwell." Shadow turned away from the Human without giving a simple thanks and started to walk. Amy placed the newspaper back rather quickly and ran up to catch up to Shadow.

"So now what?"

"Nothing," came an uninterested reply. He kept walking.

"What do you mean nothing!?"

"What I mean is…" Shadow closed his eyes and suddenly stopped walking, crossing his arms over his chest. "We can't do anything, or rather, you can't do anything. And since I'm now responsible in taking care of you, I can't do anything."

Amy felt slightly offended, "What do you mean I can't do anything?"

"Tch…" he unfolded his arms and started to walk again. Amy ran after him shouting until he replied, "We don't have an identity aside from any legendary feats we've accomplished in the past. Anyway, you saw how the police wanted to capture Sonic. I doubt that they would think any different from me." In fact, something deep within his head said that they wanted to catch him to seal him. Honestly, he didn't know why he had a feeling that was it, but it was probably something to worry about, even if it would be impossible. From the back of his mind he casually wondered if he had lived long enough to see Silver in his timeline. It wasn't too out of the ordinary, and he was, after all, immortal.

That all didn't matter at the moment, as of now he just wanted to get out of the beating sun. Casually he glanced back towards Amy. He wasn't sure how he was going to handle her. Shadow was a wanderer, a traveler, much like Sonic was, and presumably Silver. The life form didn't like being tied down for too long in one place, and he was quite curious about the city and how the future looked like. Shadow frowned. It couldn't be helped. Without a second thought, Shadow rushed forward.

Amy was left in the dust shouting after him, "Shadow! Hey you jerk come back here- huh?" Her eyes caught on something that glimmered. Attention turning, she cleared away the sand that had blown on it uncovering a silver chaos emerald. "Shadow!"

* * *

"Sonic!" the blue blur screeched to a halt as he looked behind to find Knuckles looking back. "I think we lost Tails and Silver." The echidna looked back at Sonic. Although he wasn't that worried something nagged at him. Something wasn't right here. Sonic just started to notice it too.

"Hey Knuckles, I don't know if you're feeling what I'm feeling, but I got a preeeeeetty bad feeling about this." Sonic looked around the place, the hallway wasn't narrow, it was, however, dark. The only thing that illuminated the place was the streaks of blue light that pulsed through the pipes that ran through the hallways. Another monstrous roar echoed throughout the place, it felt like it shook the very souls of Sonic and Knuckles. This thing sounded close, closer than Sonic and Knuckles would like it to be. What was worse is that Silver and Tails were no where to be found, and their guide was out there, somewhere. Things would likely be easier if they could find the center of the place seeing as how that looked to be a main room. "Hey Knuckles, follow me!"

* * *

Silver and Tails kept riding till they reached the center of the area. It looked somewhat different, it was darker and a more sinister feeling befell them. Silver felt it more so more than Tails, and a grimace was placed on Silver's face. He felt unwell, sick, and unclean. Tails noticed and patted Silver's shoulder looking at him with worry. "Are you alright? Do you need to sit down?"

Silver shook his head, "No. I'm fine. But this feeling.." The albinistic hedgehog looked around the large room. A pulse of plasma shot up through the center as per normal, and faded away. Looking up there was still the center structure, looking down was still the abyss. Silver squinted his eyes as he looked downward. There looked like something was moving. Silver squinted harder at the blackness. "Is that... fog...?" it was an absentminded question. Tails scampered over to look over the edge also, he squinted at the fog also.

"Can you maybe throw some sort of pulse of phsycokinetic power down to light the way up?" asked the fox. Silver nodded. Raising a hand, he accumulated a heavy amount of power, then made it tangible. Hovering his hand over the gaping chasm, Silver manifested his powers into a watery teardrop. It dropped down the darkness.

Silver and Tail's eyes widened. Both of them screamed.


	8. empty hands silent walks

Shadow looked at the chaos emerald that was in Amy's hand for some time, and she too looked upon it also. It was real, there was no doubt about it, the energy that emitted was as authentic as it could be, and Shadow felt it. Why he didn't felt it earlier was a mystery, perhaps it was because he was frustrated from the situation or because of the recent transportation from one time to another made him weak to the feeling. Shadow was still upset that he was here, but the chaos emerald that was held in Amy's palm made his day just a little better. With a chaos emerald he could transport places with a flick of his wrist or bend its power for his own will. A greedy hand reached out to pluck it from Amy's hand however she just managed to avoid his fingers.

"Nuh-uh! You ditched me last time, and I know you're gonna ditch me again." She spoke in a rather berating tone, her plans to obviously keep the emerald in her stead so that she could command Shadow what to do with it. It was like blackmailing, only using the precious stone against Shadow.

The black hedgehog gave a huff and narrowed his eyes, "That chaos emerald is good as useless if its with you." The words bit down into her like a lion to its prey and he saw how it affected her with the pained expression. His hand stretched out with an upturned palm and he waited patiently for the gem to be placed into his palm.

"Ugh! You're impossible!" She turned away without giving it to him and began to fume, her foot tapping rather impatiently and her arms cross. Shadow was almost half tempted to just pluck it from her hands right now, but then she really would get angry and he rather not test her fury at the moment until her storm clams.

He placed his outstretched arm on his hip and gave an annoyed sigh and waited patiently. "If you're going to be uncooperative then we'll never get home."

"Says the one being uncooperative!"

She was being outrageously stubborn, "Amy I need that-" There was a gasp from her suddenly as she looked at her hands, to which Shadow rolled her eyes. "What, you lost it already?" It was meant to be a joke but when she turned around slowly, still looking at her hands- her _empty _hands- Shadow began to eat his words. Brilliant.

"I had it in my hands! It just disappeared!" There was a slight panicked tone coming from her and Shadow looked at her rather dumbfounded but wasted no time in looking around to see if anyone had the nerve to, perhaps, steal the stone. There was a hint of yellow that flashed by as the culprit turned the corner and Shadow was immediately on their tail, in a rather literal sense. The culprit, who turned out to be a cheetah, screeched at the forceful tug at her tail as she rounded another corner holding the precious stone. Shadow stood behind her rather ominously, his face grim and more than slightly pissed.

"Hand it over," he was being nice about it too. Otherwise the cheetah's bag would have been promptly taken from her and he would have started digging through her personal belongings.

The cheetah, acting as innocently as possible, began, "I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean." The bag was clutched tighter and brought closer to her chest, but Shadow just pulled a little more on her tail and with a yelped she dug her hands into the bag and through the emerald on the floor.

Shadow, still holding onto the tail, bent down to pick it up, observed it for three seconds, and looked at her dully. "The _real _one." The cheetah looked at him as dumbly as possible, still feigning innocence till Shadow let go of her tail to push her upon a wall. Hand made way for her neck and he began to snarl. "**Where is it?**"

For being face to face to a hedgehog that obviously didn't have time for these antics, she was rather calm. "I don't know!" she shouted it, and this time Shadow did believe it; however, this also claimed his suspicions true and that she did, indeed, steal it.

"Then tell me how to find it." His grip upon her fur did not lax at all, and his red eyes began to burn.

"If I tell you then you have to let me go." There was a pause between the two and it was then that Amy finally rounded the corner and the cheetah looked towards her as if pleading for help.

Amy unconsciously heard it and began to reprimand Shadow. "What are you doing!?"

"Getting information," Shadow replied, glancing at her. "Fine," he looked back at the cheetah. "Tell me how to find it and I'll let you go." The cheetah half expected him to lessen his grip upon her and would have then attempted to run for it, however that wasn't the case and she was left to spilling the secret.

"Red pangolin, tell him that you got the bread from the market. He might ask what kind, reply with sweet." Shadow furrowed his brow just slightly, "If you want it that badly, you gotta fish for it." Not as nearly as content as he would have been, Shadow released the cheetah from his grip who then ran away nearly slipping on the stone. Hand lingered from where it was once and he looked towards Amy rather angrily.

"Now what?" she asked, her voice tinged with guilt.

Shadow sighed and began to walk out of the alley they were in, closing his eyes. "Now we look for that pangolin." He wanted to leave it at that, but Amy couldn't drop the subject at hand.

"I'm sorry Shadow, I should have given it to you." He stopped walking, glancing back at her to see that she was looking down at the floor obviously upset at something. "I should have also listened to you and not have gone into that portal." She sounded like she was sobbing, and if almost on queue tears began to hit the stone pavement beneath her. Amy felt absolutely _terrible _for what happened, and part of her figured that Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Silver could have managed just well by themselves. Yet here she was, with Shadow, standing in the future. It felt so strange and so different, just the aura itself made her stomach curl and her heart sink to her feet. She was scared, and Shadow could see that. He didn't know what to do or what to say, he wasn't sentimental nor was he a person that someone could cry on (and it wasn't that he felt bad for not being able to make Amy feel better but rather he felt bad that she felt like that).

He looked away from her, arms crossing and looking intently in front of him as Amy cried. What could he say to make things be better? Nothing came to his mind. "We'll get the emerald back and we'll find Silver and go home." He continued to walk.


	9. where realms gather

They heard the scream, it echoed throughout the entire building they were in. Sonic had heard fear before and these screams did sound much like them. Knuckles and Sonic both looked towards where those screams came from, both hearts practically stopping due to fear and catching in their throats making it hard to swallow. It was only one glance that they both gave each other that they silently agreed to pursue the noise. Sonic went ahead, his breath nearly vanishing from him because of fear that Tails and Silver might be in serious trouble (though they were quite capable to handle themselves Sonic still worried from both his friends).

He screeched to a halt as Sonic made it to the inner area of the construct, eyes darting every which way he can in such blinding darkness looking for anything that might lead him to his lost companions. The light pulsed through the endless abyss, creating a light that rippled across all the room, the metal turning practically white from the raw energy. There was still nothing but the sounds of muffled turning and dripping of some substance. His brows furrowed, last he had been here there was nothing dripping. Emerald eyes turned upward, the light now gone and thus he looked at a darkness. The hedgehog squinted carefully at the abyss, searching for where that dripping noise was coming from, and it wasn't until there was another pulse of light coming from the chasm that Sonic gasped.

There above, attached to the metal and stone walls, appeared to be a leech-like monster. Its appendages stuck to the wall like glue and wrapped within its tail was both Tails and Silver whom appeared to be passed out. The thing looked liked it was covered in a thick slime, which accounted for the dripping that was heard around the area. The creature almost blended into the wall, making it hard to see even with the bright light illuminating the area. Sonic tried not to make any noise in hope that the creature wouldn't notice him, yet he could not keep the gasp from coming out of his mouth. Last he saw of the creature before the light dissipated was a shift of its head as it turned to look right at Sonic. Though doubtful that the thing couldn't see in the dark, he tried to back away from the edge of the hole in hopes that if the creature did pursue him that it would strike the last place he had once stood. Sonic thought carefully of the situation, and he needed to wake Silver and Tails from their slumber before the creature lets them go from its tail.

Sonic could hear the thing shuffle across the wall and it sounded retched. Another pulse of light from the center of the room and Sonic saw that it moved from its place and had dropped down to where Sonic once stood previously when it first saw it. The tail waggled all over practically throwing his two friends around, he wondered how they could possibly still be awake from all the tossing (perhaps the fluids that it was covered in had a sleeping agent). He needed to get it farther away from the edge! Perhaps with Knuckles back there he could act as bait and Knuckles could just punch the thing. It wouldn't hurt to try. "Hey, slime ball!" The creature turned its head towards him, "Don't think you got room for an extra side dish?" It screeched at him, loudly, and he had to cover his ears before he started to run and the thing began to chase him. He kept just slow enough that it wouldn't lose interest, but fast enough that the thing barely bit down on his tail, and when the barest sight of red appeared in his vision he shouted, "Heads up Knuckles!"

The hedgehog proceeded to run faster as Knuckles looked dazed for just a moment before his eyes caught onto the large being that was chasing Sonic. Eyes widened as Sonic rushed passed him, but he wasn't slow enough to draw back his arm and slam his fist down onto the things head. Though the head didn't crush from Knuckle's fist, it did become dazed and let go of the two friends who had been dangling from its tail. They hit the floor rather hard, enough for Tails to come out of his slumber looking around rather crazed. His breath was fast as if awakening from a nightmare, and he was wide eyed as Knuckles wiped off slime from his fists.

"Eww…" he said rather meekly as he wiped the substance on the wall. "What is this stuff?" Sonic ran to his side and shrugged as the thing began to haphazardly get up and recover from the punch.

"Beats me, but we got bigger trouble." They both readied themselves as the creature roared again, it was more ear splitting than the last. Silver didn't even stir and Tails semi-crawled towards him as the beast began its assault on those who trespassed upon its lair.

"Silver?" Tails began to shake Silver attempting to get him to wake up. The monster moved around wildly as Sonic baited it and Knuckles tried to repel it. Silver, meanwhile, was shaking so uncontrollably that Tails thought he was having a seizure of some sort. The fox knew little of medicine, and tried his best to help Silver the best he could. It almost appeared as if he was trying to open his eyes, yet to no avail. Perhaps it was the slime that was making him react this way, and if that was the case Tails needed to get it off of him.

The beast, meanwhile, was screeching and moving about haphazardly among the corridor. The darkness that swelled around the two heroes made it hard to coordinate their attacks on the leech-like monster. Occasionally, they bumped into each other, or missed a queue for the both of them to begin their assault on the thing as it moved about wildly and left slime all over the place. At one point or another the two slipped on the substance that it left behind and almost found it impossible for them to fight the thing. Unfortunately, the thing was persistent in its battle against the two, and briefly Sonic wondered if there were more of these monsters within the place.

"We got to get out of here!" Knuckles shouted before he narrowly missed a bite from the monster. He counter struck it with a punch to the monster's side, to which it returned with a wail and hiss.

"Tails, grab Silver!" Sonic gave it a good kick to its side as it began to stumble so that it could tip over and they could make a dash towards the exit. Tails looked up just briefly upon hearing those words, then took Silver by the hand and gently began to bring him up to his feet. Sonic rushed to his side to help Tails with carrying hedgehog as the thing attempted to get back up. They attempted to make a run for it before the being got up and began to chase them, but because of Silver dragging them down and the slippery floor, it was almost impossible to get away from the nightmarish creature. They barely glanced back until they heard another wail come from it, this time less pronounced and almost as if the thing was fading from life. Tails glanced back to see Fox standing over the slain creature, a spear having been thrown into the creature's heart.

"Sonic, Fox, they..." he trailed off as the group of them slowed down and the mysterious armored being began to walk towards them. As they walked nearer, Silver began to murmur and eyelids droopily opened yet he still wasn't coherent enough to speak or to actually think.

"Your friend appears to need help," Fox commented as Sonic and Knuckles looked over to check Silver.

"He'll be fine," Sonic replied rather jokingly. Tails frowned at him but tugged Silver upward to get a better grasp on the barely functioning hedgehog. "What was that thing that just chased us?"

The armored being looked back at the beast for a moment, then turned back to Sonic. "It was a wyrm."

"A worm?" Knuckles questioned.

"I think they mean a dragon," Tails replied offhandedly as he kept his observation on Silver to see if there was any changes in his mental state.

"So you keep dragons in here?" Sonic replied to Fox's answer.

"I do not keep them, they just appear here among other things." They motioned to the area around them, "This place is like a joining of many realms. Though I cannot say that you can find whatever else you may be looking for here, you can find many other things from different places. I suppose it might be the genie's work that this place is like that, but I can not be too sure." They paused to allow their words to sink into the trio's head, "There are many other things in here that are worse than what you fought, and I must plead that you leave here before more of them awaken from their slumber. Its strange, for my years having lived here not once had they stirred till that appeared." It made a motion to the emerald that Knuckles had kept on him, "I assume your friend would know more about that than I, but I assume it has to do with the influx of power that it is creating in this place." Sonic glanced at Silver who was still weary, yet color began to return to him and he was able to lift his head from his previous limp state. For a second Sonic guessed that Silver didn't have all the answers to the universe, nor all the answers to time travelling, yet from what Fox said he was starting to think different.

With slurred speech Silver spoke, "Past t' present…." speech drifted off as if his thought had been misplaced within his mind. "Emeralds are.. screwing with th' balance…" Tails shushed him before he continued with his ramblings.

Fox looked at Silver for a time, then back to the group in general. "I'll take you back to the surface, I doubt the emerald will affect this sanctum while you stand outside, but I implore you to leave as soon as you can."

"Yeah no worries, we'll leave as soon as we can." Sonic gave a thumbs up to Fox, who in response turned away and began to lead them through the corridor. Sonic shuffled towards Tails and took Silver's other arm and wrapped it around his neck. "Come on, Silv. Don't want you dragging behind." His companion gave him a wary look then looked rather blankly at the floor. "Tails, what happened while we were separated?"

Tails looked up from what he was focused on, "Well… we left to go look for you then we found that thing. I wasn't too freaked out over it but Silver began screaming. I don't know why, he was more than capable to defend himself against it. While he was freaking out the thing knocked us out and before I knew it I was here." The fox shrugged while glancing at Silver who tried to speak again but all that came out was even more slurred speech.

"Maybe he has a fear of leeches, I know Amy does." They began to walk around the creature that they had slained. Silver began to tense up as they stepped over a limb but Sonic reassured him that the creature was dead. "Look Silv, the thing is dead, you don't have to worry about it anymore." In a lower voice Sonic began, "Hey Tails, you sure that Silv didn't drink that stuff that was all over this thing?"

Tails gave Sonic an annoyed look before replying, "The creature did make us dream some weird things."

"Like-?"

"I don't know, I mean, at one point I was dreaming that I was drowning. I think the substance on the creature gets absorbed into the brain while its victims sleep and affects the part of the brain that stores our memories and emotions. Maybe that's what it feeds off of."

"Or maybe you just happened to have a bad dream," Knuckles jumped in. He wanted to keep things pretty simple in his mind as of now, today was already beginning to get too complicated for him. "Maybe its like Sonic said, Silver has a fear of leeches."

"Let's ask him when we get out of here, this place is giving me a really bad feeling." Sonic began to look around the place as he said it as if another one of those things will come out.

"Yeah, that's a good idea. I'm starting to feel bad around here too."


	10. memories never remembered

His mind was a blur.

All the murmurs and talk that his friends spoke of were drowned out by the endless noise within his head. Barely any words from the outside made sense to him, and Fox's talk only made his mind spin ever more. Sometimes it felt like he couldn't breath and his legs failed him on a few occasions which made Sonic and Tails have to drag him across the floor. The hallway that appeared dim was practically pitch black to him except for things that were near a foot away from him. Terrible memories and feelings swelled around him, the creature that made him dream was more like a flashback to what was once real. The city aflame, the monsters of flame killing all that it sees, and even the attempts on Sonic's life that he once made. He could hardly recall those times, those memories alone were barely recognizable, and those flashes that the beast conjured up while Silver slept made them more prominent within his mind. Silver treated these visions as a disease, rounding them all up in a corner in some attempt to purge them from his mind; but yet they still persisted and blackened each part of his well being.

Briefly, he wondered, if Tails too had an image of this mirage but was keeping silent of such memories in fear that it would make the situation worse. Whatever it was, Silver was fine keeping it between the two of them, never needing to mention what transpired in their dreams ever. There was doubt that he could handle reliving those terrible memories (or lies), let alone speak them to his companions.

"You must journey the rest of the way without me." Half lidded eyes opened to look towards the direction that the voice came from. It was Fox's voice, they stood just in front of Silver enough that he could see them.

"Thanks for leading us back, and for babysitting Knux." Sonic smiled as Knuckles whipped his head around to stare at Sonic.

"What was that-?" Knuckles started before he was cut off by Fox.

"It is no problem, I hope you are able to find what you need in your future adventures." They began to walk past the group and towards the center of the sanctuary but stopped just a couple of meters away to continue speaking as the group began to continue. "I would make haste, for I sense more disturbances in the realm."

The group turned wide eyed at the other, Sonic and Tails merely turning their heads whilst Knuckles did an entire 180. "More disturbances-?" Tails questioned. Yet when the words came out of his mouth they soon trailed away as he found Fox had disappeared. All sorts of questions began to ring about the trio's mind, some wondering if they had just saw a hallucination conjured up from the area itself or Fox actually knew how to teleport like Silver. Both possibilities were probable in that Silver's abilities were likely not limited to merely himself and that the place they stood in gave them a feeling of ill (not to mention an actual dragon just appeared out of thin air). Still, they all gawked at the lack of presence there, and it unsettled them all greatly. Sonic was quick to put the theories aside to heft Silver up and usher everyone else to keep walking. It seemed that it felt like they were all being watched at this very moment, as if billions of eyes were upon them and the room itself were made of them. Just briefly one might have seen Knuckles checking the floor to check if the floor was not made of eyes because of how disturbing the feeling was.

"I don't know about you guys, but I'm ready to get out of here." They made their way to the end of the tunnel and came across a rather small doorway made of complete iron. The doors were extremely intricate, vines and roses littered the black slab. Knuckles was the one to push it open with little help and it easily was pried open as small flakes of rust fell to the ground. They arrived to a place within the crags of the rocks where the city was laid upon. There was a small road leading to nowhere wide enough that it didn't feel crowded as the four of them stood there. It seemed that no one had found the door to the inside of the city as there were no guards placed in front of the door. Looking up there was a darkness spreading over the sky and a chilled wind blowing gently across the land kicking up loose snow that had managed to get upon the city. To the side they could see the sun beginning to peek out from the side of the Earth making that area burst into colors. Everyone breathed in the night's air and exhaled the stress that built up within their bodies and it seemed that again that things were getting better.

Sonic and Tails set Silver down against the rock and the hedgehog whilst Knuckles walked over to sit at the edge of the path allowing his feet to dangle dangerously above the ground. Sonic soon joined him and so too Tails as he made sure Silver was fine (he had enough strength to wave the fox away from him as he laid his head against the rocks mulling over the dream).

"You think we're missed?" Knuckles inquired after pausing to take in the scenery. Those words spoken should have been 'were we missed' since their present had already happened. They knew that the past had already happened and yet they kept their mouths shut and pretended that it wasn't true. The thought alone was depression, to venture further within those thoughts became even more upsetting.

There was a chuckle from Sonic as he placed his hands behind his head and laid his back on the pathway. "Amy is probably having a heart attack," he sighed as his eyes slowly closed. The idea of Amy looking endlessly for Sonic would have been funny but in this instance it seemed too dark to laugh at. Briefly he wondered how others were coping with the lack of presence of the trio and Eggman; part of him figured they were glad that Eggman had disappeared from the world, another figured they were in panic that Tails, Knuckles, and Sonic had disappeared without a trace. It felt so wrong.

Silver just sat there, overhearing everything, wanting to say that the past had already transpired and that they probably thought the three of them were dead or worse. Words couldn't form in his mouth though and the dream kept repeating itself in his head and he was left to gently slide to the ground and curl up waiting for sleep to take him. It was probably for the best that he couldn't say anything in retrospect since telling them all this would, no doubt, make them all incredibly upset. The hedgehog hated that he brought these three to this era and fear overcame him as he tried to figure out how to send them all home without messing with his home even further. The only way was to wipe their memories and possibly never return, but he didn't want that, he didn't want to be forgotten.

"I can't wait to go back home," Tails said softly.

"Me too."

They descended back into a slumber.

* * *

"We got your bread from the market," the pangolin looked up from his book and cocked his head. Shadow felt stupid saying that, and felt even more stupid when the pangolin inquired what type of bread it was. "Sweet bread," he replied swiftly. Amy stood next to him, looking all around her. The pangolin studied the both of them for some time until he got up from his seat and closed the book he was reading.

"I wasn't expecting someone like you," he spoke as if he were the richest man in the world as he put the book away in its respective shelf. "Maybe someone from G.U.N," he paused momentarily as if pondering what he spoke. "Though, you do look like someone who could be apart of their ranks." The pangolin looked back towards Shadow and Amy who stood patiently (perhaps Shadow a little less patient looking than Amy). "Now what national treasure are you here for?"

"That emerald you stole, the silver one-"

"You **must **be more specific than that, we gather many of these emeralds daily and the lot get _so _mixed up."

He held back a growl as his fur bristled just slightly. "You know exactly about what I'm talking about," he placed the fake emerald on the table for the other to see. The pangolin looked down at the fake emerald for some time, then looked back up to Shadow who stood there looking absolutely peeved. "Where is it?"

The more Shadow and Amy stood in this guy's presence the more annoyed the both of them were getting, with feelings mutual it was if the both of them were silently planning a mission to just infiltrate their guild and just steal the damn thing back. "I am afraid you were already outbid." Shadow nearly burst into rage while Amy withheld her tongue by nearly biting it off "We hold a rather respectful guild; you see, we steal the goods and give that to who bids the most. In this case, the bidder was a man with some great power."

"Doubtful," Shadow said doleful. "I assume its against your policy to give out names." He crossed his arms ready to get a grocery list of things that he had to do in order to get one stupid name (on the other hand he was still silently plotting with Amy to just skip the grocery list and just beat the information out of him).

"No." Shadow and Amy nearly fell over when he said that.

"Wait," Amy held up both her hands. "So you sell this stuff to other people and use their names for blackmail!?" The pangolin nodded, they seriously lucked out.

"Lucky for you, our client hasn't been on the best of terms with us, so you are doing me a grand favor." The pangolin gave a cheery grin, "Though there are certain **regulations **I wish for you to follow." _Regulations_, Shadow thought. He went through his mental list of what regulations could possibly come from this Pangolin. One was rather short, which he prefered, and the other was rather long and tiresome. The notion of such reminded him of the billions of laws and rules that he was bound to when going on whatever G.U.N mission they sent him on, and although it wouldn't be that difficult, at least to him, he didn't want to think that he was helping some dirty creep out. Still, at least he could bend them.

"What do you want?" came a growl fiercer than he expected.

The pangolin chuckled in turn, "Simple." He began to walk back towards the table, his claws sliding across the metal rather gently. "_Scare_ our client, maybe wreck some of his A.I.s while you're at it. The more the better, perhaps if you scare him well enough we might owe you a debt." He paused before the words debt broke through from his mouth. "Of course taking that emerald back would be enough, and since you're not tied to our little organization I'm sure that enough would suffice." The pangolin shrugged as if he had been through this all before and had been reiterating lines that had been spoken thousands of times before.

Amy just barely touched Shadow's arm, "Shadow?" The black hedgehog looked at her and once she had his attention she glanced barely at the red pangolin as she gently turned away from him. "You can't possibly think about doing this?" came a whisper under her breath.

"Its not like I haven't done it before."

"Still, this isn't exactly our home."

Ah, _this_. Before Shadow had thought of that for a time, and she wasn't wrong either. This place wasn't exactly the place they knew before, the culture different, the buildings, even the language was somewhat changed from those years. To them, this place was like another world, even if this world was still their own. "It'll be fine," he replied.

"But what about Silver?"

"Don't worry." He turned away from her and back to the pangolin. "Where is your client?"

A devious grin appeared on his mouth just as Shadow spoke those words. "Names aside, he's in that large mansion on that hill I'm sure you've seen." There was growing frown growing on Shadow's face at the lack of details of the infiltration. The pangolin seemed to notice but paid no mind to it, instead he went on, "Just be sure to get the job done by this week." He turned around, the conversation obviously over and Shadow too turned. Amy was about to open her mouth to say something but was ushered out by Shadow before she began to talk. "Another thing," he nearly shouted as they left. "We never had this conversation."

They made their way out rather quickly and as soon as the door shut from the building Amy then began to complain. "What was that all about? That guy sounds so shady!"

Shadow was glad that he wasn't the only one that seemed to notice how he acted. It felt like he wanted them to go there, the whole conversation seemed rather unnatural. The lack of details, questions from the other, and even the way he acted seemed so **strange**. "There's something more behind this," Shadow crossed his arms and began to ponder for a second. "I'll go alone, we need to make sure that chaos emerald is actually there."

Amy opened her mouth to say something before she shut it and looked away down the road. "Be careful," there was a long pause before she spoke again. "Should we meet at the park we passed by while getting here?" He nodded slowly as his head turned to look towards the mansion atop of the hill that the pangolin spoke of.

"I'll be back by tomorrow morning," and with that he sped away towards the hill. Amy was going to say something before he sped off however the words would have fell on deaf ears anyhow. A raised hand was made as if she was going to shout stop but stopped midway and returned to her side. She bit her lip as her ears drooped and sighed gently then began to make her way towards the park as her stomach rumbled, silently she cursed herself for not eating something before she left to find Sonic (and she cursed herself even more for not bringing a snack at least). Her eyes went this way and that, the money on her being useless as it was so far into the future and in a different country entirely that it would be useless, did they even use bills in this era? It was then that she took her time to observe her surroundings more closely rather than trying to find a single red pangolin.

The architecture was much different than Shamar from the past. The buildings had the illusion that they were the same yet upon a closer look it appeared that they did integrate some of the new technology within itself such as solar panels and doors that opened up by themselves. The newer buildings were made completely of white metal and contained blue streaks running all across them, as if they were energy; however there was few of them and they spotted the place rather lightly. Sometimes she saw a floating piece of metal next to the building shifting back and forth or up and down repeatedly. The buildings were rather small, however, never going past a handful of floors and she figured she was in one of the smaller cities in the future rather one of the grand ones like Empire City or someplace else. The sky having turned dark was still illuminated by the city below and it made navigating through the streets easier.

Her mind wandered everywhere as she entered the park dimly lit by the lanterns placed almost haphazardly about the road. She spotted a bench and placed herself upon it and gave a yawn. She could play the waiting game, or she could take a much needed nap.

Emerald eyes turned upward to the sky as she tried to spot some stars or the eternal half moon. Once she found that her place in reality was returned and she didn't feel at all too lost, just severely homesick and hungry. A nap would be preferable she mused as she closed her eyes about to drift off to dream. Anxiety dripped into her mind like oil on water and she soon found it rather difficult to fall asleep yet it didn't stop her from keeping her eyes closed at at least allowing her to give a moment of repose. It wasn't until she heard a large explosion in the distance that her ears popped up and her body became rigid as her eyes flew open.

Her head spun as she got up finding just a barely visible trail of smoke rising from where the mansion was. She began to walk towards the noise as the public began walking out of their doors, turning on their lights, or opening up their windows to find just what it was that made that ear splitting sound. Voices began to pile up upon one another and it was only a few seconds pass before Amy began to run towards the building that Shadow travelled to. She could see everyone's panicked expression and felt terribly bad for having to put them through this mess yet worry overcame her and she wondered if Shadow would be alright.

As if on queue Shadow appeared in front of her in a bright flash of light almost blinding her for a second. She blinked a few times and before she could comprehend what was happening around her someone grabbed her wrist and there was another flash. The first thing that came to Amy's head head was to empty the already empty contents of her stomach. She gagged immediately and her mouth produced stomach bile that splattered on the sand that she was thrown upon. Knees hit the sand and began to clutch her chest thinking that her heart was about to fall straight out of her ribcage. It felt like someone scooped out her innards and plopped them back in the matter of seconds and everything about her felt so _wrong_.

"Sorry," she heard as she swallowed acidic saliva and whatever bile that caught her throat. Emerald eyes glanced at a now crouching Shadow beside her, his red eyes glanced up and down as if making sure she was in good health, or rather, to make sure there wasn't any extra limbs sticking out of her.

"What happened?" her voice rasped.

"G.U.N." Just saying those words left a bitter taste in his mouth. Part of Shadow didn't want to admit that it made sense as to why G.U.N was pursuing him, yet how did they come to be aware of his presence if he was absent for so many years? Unless their network grew ten fold and they were made aware of his presence as soon as he set foot into town or there was a duplicate of him was running around then it didn't make sense. The former reason seemed to be more reasonable than the latter, yet the idea of it wasn't so absurd. Still, if G.U.N was chasing him down that meant that he had to keep low. He brought the silver chaos emerald into view, "They 'left' me this."

"I thought they were on our side!" Amy was beginning to become more panicked as this news slowly clicked in her head.

"They _were_," he got up from his crouched position and looked around. They were on top of a sand dune and from afar he could see the city. Helicopters were flying overhead with search lights and he could see fighter jets flying in from the east.

"But why would they want you?"

"I can think of plenty of reasons." Amy sighed as she slowly got up from the ground, she wobbled slightly and reached out to grab Shadow's shoulder before she nearly tripped herself. Shadow glanced at her for a moment before he crossed his arms and looked away towards the city. "We need to get out of here."

Amy's face went bitter at the notion that she might be sent through that portal again and feel her body spill out before her and chucked back in. She frowned as she glanced from the emerald in his hands to the city whilst her hand removed itself from his began bitterly, "Are we going to be going to Sanwell?" She vaguely remembered that the person whom they inquired about the whereabouts of Sonic and co. were near that city. "Do you know where it is?"

"No." Amy mentally breathed a sigh of relief since she didn't have to be subjected to transportation again. "But Sanwell is in southern Holoska." That frown returned to Amy's face as her eyes went from the city to Shadow. Shadow took notice of Amy's mild panic and gave a sigh, "You won't get sick this time." He was actually mildly surprised that she began to hurl as soon as she was released from the jaws of teleportation, but at the same he figured that it wasn't something too unnormal. He was sloppy, though Shadow wasn't going to admit it outright to Amy he did was starting to feel some overwhelming affects from time travel. Whatever it was he couldn't quite place his finger on it. The feeling was like a dog nipping at an owner's hand or a noise that annoyed someone to no end that wouldn't stop no matter how much they pleaded. Part of the feeling was much like how he felt when Rouge awakened him from his slumber, memories of Maria clawing at the side of his brain as he fought Omega. _Those _memories were still present within him but the claws were dull, _**these**_, meanwhile, were almost fresh in his mind, and yet not. The moon blowing up was a prominent scene that kept repeating in the back of his head, something he couldn't quite remember but the blame still being placed on him. Yet why would time travel bring all these memories to light? Was it that they were passing through time and during that passage things from both past, present, and future came upon him messing with his mind or was it some ill force at work twisting and tainting everything?

"Are you alright?" Amy was standing in front of him now trying to look into Shadow's eyes to find what was eating at him so much.

"I'm fine," he lied. He stretched out his arm holding the chaos emerald and concentrated upon it. Hopefully not too much of the land had changed since those last few hundred years, he wouldn't want to get themselves transported inside any mountain or possibly human. He looked at Amy who he assumed was steeling herself for the transportation. "Chaos control!"


	11. that old familiar feeling

"_At around 6:00AM, Sonic the Hedgehog was spotted at Babel, Shamar attacking a local's house. G.U.N was fortunately at the scene but was unable to capture Sonic for questioning since he appears to have almost magically disappeared. Local footage shows that he seemed to have appeared a few blocks away and grabbed a pink hedgehog before he disappeared in a flash. Later G.U.N's commanding chief, Gen. John M. Lebenok will be having a public meeting talking about these unsettling events. Though G.U.N refusing to give the public more information about this attack they are assuring the public that any questions they may have will be addressed at this meeting. I'm Katie Dragon, back to you._"

They all looked at the TV as if they couldn't believe what they were seeing. Sonic was fuming through his teeth pointing at the footage they released of 'him' when it was, in fact, Shadow that they were showing. Silver's jaw had almost dropped to the floor and it looked like he was just about ready to crumble off the chair and go under the table right there and hope that this was just all some really weird and detailed dream that he was having. Tails almost spat out the drink that was in his mouth and Knuckles pretty much dropped his eating utensils on the plate looking as if he saw a ghost.

"I thought you just transported the three of us here," Knuckles turned towards Silver who was holding on to the edge of the table they were sitting at for support.

"I did!" he yelled back. "At least, I thought I did." It almost looked like Silver was about to have a panic attack but he swallowed the growing ball in his throat. "Unless I didn't transport Shadow but…." He looked back towards the TV that was showing a still of the footage of Shadow taking the pink hedgehog. There was no doubt in his mind that hedgehog was Amy, "I don't understand." Knuckles, confused about what Silver meant by having not transported Shadow narrowed his eyes at Silver.

"What do you mean you might not have transported him here?" He said those words carefully eyeing Silver as he sucked in a shaky breath and placed a hand on his head as if trying to rub away an oncoming headache.

"Its not my place to say," eyes that looked at Knuckles turned away to something that seemed much more interesting. He already regretted saying too much about Shadow and internally he hoped that others wouldn't ask him more about what Shadow was or what Silver meant about Shadow. It was personal things that the hedgehog had confided in Silver, something that he did after living hundreds of years after Sonic's time. The first time Silver had even seen Shadow living in this era he thought that he had transported him to this era, which he didn't, he was only an immortal being that was looking for someone from the past to connect with. Of course, everytime Silver returned back to the past that Shadow was erased and never remembered anything previously. Deep down Silver wanted to dearly tell the Shadow of the past of what happened in the future but always kept his mouth shut in fear that Shadow would avoid Silver. Thinking about it now began to make him depressed and he slowly put those thoughts to the side.

Sonic had eventually broke away from his internal venting and noticed the conversation that Knuckles and Silver were having. "So Shads really is immortal?" He made a low whistle, "I kinda thought that was just stuff he was saying to make him look cooler." Silver looked at Sonic from under the hand that he used to cover his face.

"He told you?" he asked removing his hand back to the table not holding it as tightly.

"Sort of," Sonic replied a little sheepishly as he bit into the shawarma he had been eating previously before the news had come on. "He probably doesn't remember even telling me anyway. How did Amy even get here?" Sonic briefly thought that her sheer will and power probably got her here but he knew that wasn't true. Still, the thought wasn't completely baseless as she did seem to get herself into a lot of odd situations. "More importantly, if you did transport Shadow here wouldn't that mean there's **two **Shadows walking around?"

Tails, who was about to place a piece of pita bread in his mouth, beat Silver to the punch. "Actually there wouldn't. When Silver transported us here time didn't stop, we just sent ahead of the timeline, not to another dimension. So if Shadow and Amy got transported here that means they just jumped ahead like us." Tails turned to look at Silver, "Unless we did get sent to another timeline."

Silver held up his hands defensively, "I'm a _thousand _percent sure I didn't." Tails shrugged and bit into the pita bread he was holding. Silver picked up a fork and made a grab for some of Sonic's food, "We have to find them quick. I'm sure they'll be looking for us too."

"Knowing Amy she'll probably find me before we find her," Sonic took another bite of his shawarma before picking up his own fork to defend his food. "At least we know Shadow has a chaos emerald since he's transporting around the place." Silver managed to grab a piece of cucumber off of Sonic's plate and promptly put it in his mouth to which Sonic gave Silver an annoyed look.

"So that means we have two chaos emeralds now," Knuckles commented looking at the chaos emerald that was set on the seat beside him hidden from view. "How many do you think Egghead has?"

"Hopefully none, but he has been kind of quiet since we last faced him." Tails looked from Knuckles around the table. It had been just two days since Eggman last showed his face, and although the silence was welcomed it did leave an ill feeling within the group's stomach. The longer that Eggman kept silent the more sinister his schemes usually were or the more intricate his robots were built; and know that Eggman was thrown into a land where technology was practically at its peak that meant his robots were even more vicious than the ones he

Built before. Since they had the advantage of two chaos emeralds that meant they had some more bark to their bite; but if Eggman had a chaos emerald of his own under his belt that meant their bark was practically useless.

Sonic shrugged and continued eating, "Yeah he's probably still reeling from how quick Silver took out that bot of his. Nice going by the way." Silver gave a curt smile as he took a sip of his lemon water as a small blush went across his face.

"Aw man, I wish I was there to see it." Knuckles sighed and looked at Silver. Just thinking about going at it against Eggman's bots made Knuckles begin to itch for a fight. It had been awhile since he last smashed something besides that overgrown leech within the inner sanctum of New Proxima. That didn't feel gratifying since metal wasn't being ripped to shreds or glass wasn't being shattered.

"You should have seen it! Silver impaled it with a giant shard of ice," Sonic proceeded to demonstrate with two pieces of pita bread and began to make his own noises to give emphasize of the battle. He gave Eggman a high pitched voice while Silver's voice sounded a lot cooler and hero like. The group laughed and giggled at the small presentation that Sonic was giving in Silver's honor and for a moment it seemed as if they weren't in the future with no way home. At the end of the demonstration he dipped one of the pieces in hummus and popped it into his mouth. "Those kind of moments make me wish I had a camera strapped to my head."

"I-It was nothing, _really_." He tried to hide the growing blush under his cup by keeping it near his face. "I was just doing what I needed to do." They sat there at the table for a couple of more minutes eating and talking about basic things occasionally turning their attention to the TV if any more information about Shadow or Amy turned up but it was pretty much the same. The bartender at the restaurant asked about it and they told them that the hedgehog was just someone that resembled Sonic. The bartender dropped the subject when Sonic, rather annoyed, pointed out how the quills on the 'faker' and the 'original' were different. Any more information about Shadow was just interviews with government officials and they had even brought in one conspiracy theorist to talk about it. She had said that wasn't Sonic but some other guy that the government won't admit that they had worked with previously which started a whole debate about it. The group was curious what she meant about that but she was eventually cut from the line and nothing was brought up about that again.

The group eventually left the restaurant after paying and were met with a cool rush of air as they found it snowing. They agreed during their lunch to return to their temporary home and figure out their next course of action to finding the rest of the chaos emeralds and meeting up with Amy and Shadow. Even with the sense of haste in their thoughts they agreed it would be nice to take a break in the midst of all the chaos and explore the city. They hadn't planned that they would become celebrities, however, as the Babylonians who caught wind of the four's presence were rather ecstatic to be able to meet the heroes of the past. Some asked all sorts of questions about the past and a few even requested to take pictures obviously uncaring about the bounty above their heads and the news of what had happened in Shamar. The group had learned, eventually, that the Babylonians did not bow to G.U.N authority and had a mutual hatred against them. They figured, at least to them, that they had gotten a duplicate of Sonic and just did the show to get more people on their side to capture Sonic for whatever reason.

Sonic, who was talking to one of the Babylonians, was more curious as to why they didn't like G.U.N began to inquire more about it. "So why don't you guys like G.U.N?"

The bird sneered at Sonic. "They wanted to enter our city and investigate the inner circle on the basis that we're holding weapons of mass destruction." Sonic balked but the idea of G.U.N doing that, yet the idea itself wasn't so farfetched. Seeing as how they were framing Sonic for destroying the place even though it was painfully obvious that wasn't Sonic at all led him to believe that G.U.N wasn't as great as they use to be (not that they are anyway). "We use to be apart of their group but left after such an insult. Since then, we have been floating around the world and only letting those we deem worthy within."

"What kind of people are those?" he tipped his head to the side curious by what she meant by that.

"Anyone who will contribute to our society, or people such as yourself who are just trying to make the best out of their life that have little." She motioned towards Sonic and towards the group who were talking to a store vendor that was selling coats. "We just want to make the best out of our lives and wish to share it with other people," she fixed her sleeves and the cloth that was on her head to better sit on her feathers. Sonic nodded in understanding and was about to ask more until Tails called him over. He looked over towards him which he found the fox waving at him to come towards him and when he looked back towards the avian to whom he was talking to she merely waved him off.

He gave a wave at her before running towards Tails, "Hey Tails. What's up?" The answer he got was a scarf thrown around his neck. It was a dark blue with small yellow stars sewn in and the fabric felt absolutely wonderful against his muzzle. "Wow, this is great!"

"Isn't it?" Tails replied with a gleeful tune to his voice. "That'll keep you warm when we go back to Silver's place." Sonic began to fix the scarf around his neck as he listened to Tails speak. "We're going to be leaving in a hour, Silver wants to pick up some stuff since we'll all have to walk there since we lost the Extreme Gear to the wyrm." His voice changed from upbeat to slightly depressed at the loss of the boards that he made. Sonic placed a hand on Tails' shoulder giving it a pat.

"Don't worry about it too much, bro. When we get back I'll help you make some new ones." The blue hedgehog gave Tails a thumbs up to which the fox smiled and nodded in turn. Sonic gave a stretch of his arms and a quick glance around the city before he began to give a quick stretch of his legs. "I'm gonna head on a little expedition of the city. Tell Silv I'll be back around in an hour." Tails gave a nod as Sonic eventually sped off sending powdered snow flying in his wake. As Sonic left Tails turned towards Silver who was talking to a local with Knuckles over the location of Babel and if any more information was released to the public concerning it.

He couldn't hear anything over the commotion and as he started towards the three of them he began to hear more. "...in about a couple, Mr. Hotshot is gonna give an official statement about you guys." Upon closer inspection the avian was looking down at his phone that had apparently just pinged him of the news. "You know, my dudes, you can stay here if you need to. Like, I don't mind if you need a place to crash or whatever since you guys are pretty legit and all."

Silver shook his head, "We'll be fine. Thank you anyway."

"Yeah, no problem my dude." The Babylonian smiled from beneath the cloth that draped loosely on his head. They were about to turn to return to their plan in collecting supplies to ready themselves for the long journey however were stopped as they turned their shoulder. "Hey, hold up one sec. I got a question for ya."

Tails tilted his head, "What is it?"

"Ok, like, you guys were alive when the founder of this place was around. Right?" Tails and Knuckles assumed he was talking about Jet so they slowly nodded their heads. "A'right. I was wondering, like, was he really a cool rider? Heim talks about him like he's some savior of the birdkind, which I think is kinda _uerg_." He rolled his eyes as he spoke about Heim and their claims to how great Jet was. Silver met him once, but it was brief and only for a quick race around the waterfall with Sonic and the gang. They didn't speak and he was just in the group and nary talked to anyone there besides Espio and Wave.

"Well…" Tails began before Knuckles cut him off.

"He's sort of a jerk," the echidna replied bluntly. Tails would have defined him more nicely but the fox shrugged at his friend's reply. Silver gave a small snicker at Knuckles reply to which the Babylonian gave a low whistle.

"That ain't too surprising," he sighed. "Thanks for the info though. At least I can tease them about knowing exclusive information." The Babylonian gave the group a wave as they turned around to return to shopping for the journey ahead. Just a couple of seconds later he looked back at his phone and shouted at them from afar, "Hey! My dudes! Speech is gonna start soon!" The group turned to wave at them, Silver giving a thumbs up, and they turned to continue on.

There were many gathering in the square curious as to what the G.U.N commander was going to say concerning the group that they were technically granting asylum to. On some of the screens was just a recording of the area where he was to give his speech to the world at large while other screens had a news reporter giving commentary of their thoughts and opinions of what was to be said. The trio, who wanted to continue on with their shopping, couldn't help to be mildly curious as to what he was about to say since it also concerned themselves also. Against from what seemed as better judgement, they all stood in the city square and waited for the speech to begin. Eventually, a tall man walked up on stage to which the camera panned towards him then to the podium. He had greying hair and looked like a man who had seen much in his time.

There were claps coming from the audience then a pause as he fixed his papers and glanced over it. Eventually, he looked at all the people in the audience and opened his mouth to begin the speech. "_Good afternoon. Now, I'm sure we're all aware of the recent events that have transpired over the course of a few days. As ridiculous as it seemed to be at first, we believe Alcor to be a respectable city and we have looked into the recent claims of our heroes, and villain, from the past returning. There is no question in my mind that what was witnessed in Alcor to be the return of Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles Prower, and Doctor Eggman; and, although not confirmed, we have strong reason to believe that Knuckles the Echidna is within New Proxima. Many of you are asking about one white hedgehog in particular but we have no records of him existing in the past nor the present. But today I'm not here to talk about the return of our heroes, I'm here to talk about the attack that Sonic committed towards Shamar. We, as G.U.N, do not tolerate any attacks towards any nation, be it the independent nations of New Proxima and ARK II, or those nations that have united with us. We kindly ask that Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, Doctor Eggman, and our anonymous white hedgehog step forward and turn yourselves into our authority so we can discuss your disappearances and negotiate with you. We will give you three days for you to comply with us, once this expires we will be forced to use violent means in your capture. I will now be taking questions._"

One reporter raised his hand to which the G.U.N commander motioned him to venture forward. "_Concerning the attack on Shamar, the hedgehog in question doesn't look like Sonic at all. What do you have to say to that?_"

The commander stepped to the side to show a projected picture of Shadow, who was now edited to look like Sonic. "_As you can see here, these features closely resemble that of Sonic. We have information showing that Sonic is able to appear and disappear in the blink of an eye due to his extreme speed and no other hedgehog we know is able to do this._" Tails and Silver's jaws clenched as the Babylonians in the square started to whisper amongst each other. They slipped up with releasing that original footage, however the new edited image looked incredibly convincing. Knuckles hands gripped so hard it almost looked as if he was to tear into his hands.

Another reported raised her hand and the G.U.N commander motioned her forward. "_Concerning this white hedgehog... Do you have some clue as to who they are?_"

The commander nodded, "_We do. Unfortunately we do not know enough about them to give an official statement._" Silver's heart dropped into his stomach. Just how much of Silver did they know and how much were they willing to bend this information? Some Babylonians glanced towards the white hedgehog that was beginning to nervously turn the golden bracelets on his wrist.

"We should get going," Tails whispered to the other two attempting for them to move out of the way before the news became even more upsetting to them. They nodded and began to make their way through the stupefied crowd. As they left their ears could hear the last question and it almost began to ring in their heads as they dragged themselves away from the crowd.

"_What will you do to these time travelers if they refuse to submit to authority?_"

"_I hope we won't have to do that. But if worse comes to worse, we won't hesitate to use deadly force._"

Sonic's running had slowed to a halt as he saw the G.U.N commander give his speech. He found himself with arms upon an open windowsill looking into a bar where Babylonians were sitting in looking at the T.V with their hands resting on glasses that had not reached their beaks. The hedgehog left before the commander could even finish, finding his words too upsetting and not wanting to upset his current running groove. When he sped back off to enjoy the city's views Sonic lost himself in thought. Though the new sights and smells were fascinating to him it always led to thoughts of home. It wasn't homesickness, not that it could be defined as homesickness, but it was something more complicated. He loved the new adventure, but at the same time something deep within him urged him to return to his world as if there was something more that met the eye. What it was he couldn't say, but he knew it was a gut feeling and a feeling based off emotion than reasoning. Sonic thought back to what Silver had mentioned while they were within the confines of the inner sanctum of New Proxima, about how amnesia could appear because of time travel.

In retrospect, the hedgehog should have questioned further upon this finding that he couldn't remember certain aspects of his life. One event in particular that he couldn't seem to recollect was the festival for the sun god that Soleanna had celebrated. Which was odd since Sonic recalled having looking forward to the event for months and yet he couldn't even remember what had happened that entire week. Another thing further troubling him as he sped over a bridge was that he couldn't seem to remember his parents. In general those memories were already a blur but yet now they seemed completely absent from his memory entirely. Silver had mentioned that he didn't remember his entire childhood and Sonic began to wonder the severity of Tails' and Knuckles' memory loss. Sonic began to slow his running as he thought about Shadow and Amy and the potential effects time traveling would have had on their memory. Shadow _already _was experiencing amnesia, having time travel mess with that more one might say that his mind was as good as empty. As for Amy, he hoped that nothing changed with her, perhaps maybe that she would forget that she had a crush on Sonic.

There was a slight snicker before he jumped and landed on top of one of the buildings and observed the city. Just by one glance he could tell that those that settled here had reconstructed the original buildings of Babylon and just added to whatever was left. New technology was integrated with the old and he could see some remnants of that old city appearing if he squinted. He breathed in the gust of air that hit him from the side and closed his eyes taking in all that he saw. Even if being stuck in the future was potentially bad, at least he could enjoy the small things about it. Sonic was able to experience first hand everything Silver had to experience, and maybe this would help him give the easy irritable hedgehog some slack when he arrived to deal with whatever ruckus that Eggman or Sonic himself had created for him to deal with. Sonic opened his eyes and looked down at the people below who were going on with their daily lives. Some were with their children, others were going on dates, from time to time he could even spot a group that had just a little too much to drink and sometimes Sonic gave a small laugh. After what seemed like an hour of wandering and sitting and talking to the locals Sonic decided it was time to return to his group to begin his trek home.

There was a loud explosion as he jumped down from the roof. The Babylonians all looked each different way as if searching where it could have come from and there was confusion in their eyes. Those that went out with their children drew their child near and entered the nearest building in panic. Sonic sprinted towards the noise and in his mind he wasn't sure if it was G.U.N or if it was Eggman. It wasn't until Sonic arrived at the square to see a brand new robotic standing there with Tails, Knuckles, and Silver facing it that he put two and two together and knew it was Eggman. As if on queue Eggman descended down in his small mobile machine and gave an evil laugh at the group of them. Sonic ran beside the trio and folded his arms giving a cocky smile whilst Silver glanced towards his companion that just arrived.

With Silver, this robot would be a piece of cake. "Sup, Egghead! Didn't know that it would be that easy to find us here."

Eggman's smile didn't seem to falter after the jab. "Why, I should actually be thanking you right now! While you four were dilly dallying I managed to find the time to study this technology." He motioned towards the robot that was built from the tech in question. The robot stood rather tall and loomed over the group of heroes. It shone a sleek silver and it had an appearance of a minotaur however protruding from the back were long thin wires that appeared to be able to grab things. It didn't hold anything and had three digits and a tail that looked rather dragon like. "With this new robot and this chaos emerald," he held up a green chaos emerald, "I'll be unstoppable!"

"Sure," Sonic replied rolling his eyes. "Would you do the honors, Silver?" Sonic beckoned his arms towards Eggman's direction and the white hedgehog nodded with a snort.

Though it seemed that their fears had been realized and that Eggman did have a chaos emerald, Silver didn't seem too worried seeing as how robots were easily taken care of. His powers always made short work of robotics and this one would be no different than the last. Silver gave the group a raised brow and casually raised his arm up to twist the robot inside out, but just as he seemed to barely touch the robotic a sharp pain was sent throughout his entire body. Eyes widened and his knees struck the ground hard and shakily he pressed his hands onto his head groaning in pain. "W-What's happening to me?"

"Oh, that's just a little something I invented so you won't be a nonsense any longer. I call it, **The Anti-ESP Wave**. Patent pending." Sonic went to Silver's side and grabbed his shoulders to assess the pain but all he could see was Silver mentally fighting himself as if the robot was trying to turn his own mind against him. The blue hedgehog looked back at Eggman almost snarling to see Eggman's hand out palm facing up. "Now, the emerald please."

Sonic looked away from Eggman and towards his friends. With just a nod of his head Sonic looked back towards the doctor and growled. "Not in a million years." Now frowning, Eggman made a motion for his creation to attack. Just before Sonic joined his friends to attack the menacing beast Sonic gave a farewell to Silver who was attempting to move away from the chaos that was about to ensue. "Sorry, Silv. Guess you gotta sit this one out for now." With a casual peace sign thrown up, Sonic joined the battle that was ensuing.

With Silver trying to edge away from the battle ensuing, Sonic figured that the thing that Eggman created wouldn't be as easily defeated as the other robotic that he seemed to have haphazardly thrown together as if a creation from the back of his mind. Sonic was hoping that Eggman would take longer to make a monster of a robot but granted the longer Eggman bided his time the more difficult his creations were to take down. Yet, for Eggman not taking so long on this creation it was already _frustrating_. The beast's movements were slow and yet it skidded around the place like a wild boar. When it hit something it hit it hard. Buildings soon had gaping holes within it and the ground looked like swiss cheese and at one point Tails began to fear that the entire city would go under and collapse upon itself because of the chaos.

"Sonic!" Tails yelled from above. The fox made a motion for Sonic to jump towards him so that the hedgehog could grab on while the beast was distracted with Knuckles. Sonic leaped towards Tails who grabbed onto his friend and they hung in midair as the fox propelled himself towards the minotaur who was now on its fours.

"Got a plan?" Sonic asked whilst looking up at his friend.

Tails replied with a nod, "The back of the machine appears to be its weak point. If you can spin at a high enough velocity at the part where the wires connect to the back you can tear through it." In theory it sounded easy enough, Sonic did have a chaos emerald in tow and it would give him enough kick to tear that thing to shreds. The hedgehog gave a silent thumbs up before Tails swung his friend towards the back of the beast. Sonic took out the chaos emerald and clenched it as he began to spin towards where a large amount of wires connected to the minotaur's back at one place. He half expected to tear through it and have the fight end at that but as soon as his spines connected with one of the wires a flood of pain entered through his body and he almost froze in place. The wires were electrified, and by the time Sonic had realized this it was too late and those wires seemed to have taken a mind of its own. They spun and began to curl around the hedgehog giving just the right amount of shock that Sonic was practically paralyzed. His hand that clenched the chaos emerald seized up and the blue chaos emerald fell out of his hands and towards the ground. Before any of his friends could realize what had transpired a thing long arm coming from the machine that Eggman sat in wrapped around the blue emerald and placed it on Eggman's hand.

"Why, thank you Sonic!" The doctor gave a toothy grin at Sonic who was attempting to struggle against the wires but failed. Knuckles, in a fit of rage, ran up to the thing and slammed his fist into the beast's arm. It made a large dent in the robot but it merely raised its arm and swiped Knuckles away rather harshly leaving the echidna flinging through the air at the mercy to whatever he would collide with. Silver, who had managed to drag himself some far aways attempted to use his powers again. He just barely managed to raise a large column that had fallen over before the robotic noticed and sent out a large burst of noise that ruined the hedgehog's focus and left him with a near deafening ringing in his head. The column smashed to the ground and broke apart in a million of pieces as Silver grabbed at his head once again. It almost seemed as if they had all lost. With the minotaur dangerously moving towards Tails, he was about to admit defeat in order to avoid getting beaten to a pulp. Knuckles had just barely recovered from the previous attack and was starting to run towards the beast with his fist upward about to smash it again in hopes that this punch would make it yield.

Before Knuckles got close to the machine and before Tails even had time to maneuver out of the way, a bright flash of light spread across the area. By reflex, everyone who had been looking towards the robotic closed their eyes or shielded their eyes from the flash. Knuckles had skidded to a halt to look away from the blinding light and Silver dug his head deeper into his hands. It wasn't long after the flash that the near uncomfortable noise of metal twisting and snapping ensued. When the initial confusion faded everyone looked at the scene before them gawking with their mouths nearly touching the floor. Atop of the minotaur stood Shadow the Hedgehog with one hand holding the silver chaos emerald and the other holding a bundle of wires that had once held Sonic captive.

"Long time no see."


	12. but wait! it gets worse

"Shadow?"

All they could do was stare and gawk at the black hedgehog that stood atop of the machine which had been torn apart. His quills moved gently against the wind and was a sight for sore eyes by everyone. He stood out against the white haze that fell over the city, fingers gently kissing the chaos emerald in one hand, and on the other they dug deep into the metal that he held in the other. Cold gaze reached upon everyone who had been battling, from Sonic who was almost shaking from the electricity that surged through his body, to Eggman who sat confused at Shadow's presence. For a nanosecond, Shadow tore his gaze away from the two to look towards an injured Knuckles, then to a barely stable Silver that lay on the floor staring at the ground ready to tear out his skull.

"Doctor," Shadow began with poisoned laced words. He contemplated the scene for a moment. To side with Eggman would do more harm than good and to side entirely with Sonic might close doors with Eggman. It was difficult to be in a situation like this seeing as how he had a perpetual stance of neutrality (with the exception of being with G.U.N) but for now his goal was to see Silver, and that meant to help Sonic and generally Eggman knew that Shadow did things because it forwarded his own agenda. His mouth opened for a second too long before words began to flow from mouth. "Leave, before I do more than destroy this machine." He turned to look at Eggman straight in the face. For now, he didn't want to choose a side, and the only reason he would help Sonic was because he needed answers to questions that Silver knew. It was his best and only option at the moment to stick with Silver, at least until he got a better grounding on this realm then be on his way; but until that, Shadow would stay with the seemingly young hedgehog.

Eggman was about to protest, his mouth opening and he began to sit up about ready to give his retort, however he became silent as a grin began to spread across his face. "Why don't you join me? You know I can help you more than those rodents." Shadow seemed to contemplate Eggman's words for a moment. It was a slim hope that Shadow would actually side with the doctor and it seemed he just barely missed that opportunity to work with Eggman.

"No. I need to get answers first," Shadow's gaze turned from Eggman towards Silver who had managed to just barely become aware of his surroundings.

The light in Eggman's eyes seemed to dim just a little at Shadow's refusal to work with him, however the doctor didn't count this all a loss. Arguing with Shadow, much less trying to negotiate with him, was difficult as his true goals were always hidden deep away. One could say that working with Shadow was near impossible (it was a wonder how G.U.N or even Rouge put up with him). He left almost unwillingly, but with two chaos emeralds now in his possession he counted this battle as a victory, although it was a grudging victory. Grumbling to himself he pressed a button on his machine and it began to float away but not without leaving a few words. "This isn't the end! I'll be sure to finish what I started." Then silence ensued except for the occasional sparks that flew from from the backside of the beast.

As Eggman left, Shadow's gaze lingered for awhile before he hopped down from the machine throwing the bundle of cables to the ground rather harshly. Tails dived towards Sonic as the black hedgehog began to near the one that was on the floor recovering from the severe migraine. Tails began to fret over Sonic, turning his friend around assessing the wounds that marked the hedgehog. The fox blamed himself for not being more observant of the machine and its capabilities but Sonic assured Tails that it wasn't his fault, albeit that these words were weak and barely even a murmur. Before Shadow reached Silver, however, Knuckles started towards their 'hero' with a grimace and practically fuming. "Hey! You got some explaining to do!" Silver began to try to get up from the floor already giving Shadow a weary look.

"On the contrary, I believe Silver is the one that needs to explain to me what's going on." Shadow turned towards the echidna that just stopped a foot away from him.

Before Knuckles opened his mouth a shout from across the courtyard echoed across the city. "_Shadow!_ I can't believe you left me back there!" His ear turned towards the familiar noise whilst everyone craned their heads to see who was shouting those words. Amy, who just walked in the courtyard, was fuming herself. "You could have transported me with you here!" Before she shouted more complaints at the immortal soul her eyes lingered to an injured Sonic who was being gently lifted from the back of the machine towards the floor by Tails. No sooner that a gasp left her lips that she practically sprinted towards the blue hedgehog's side forgetting all about Shadow. Briefly, Shadow mentally sighed relief as he turned his attention back to Knuckles.

"You let Eggman get away with the chaos emerald!" Knuckles' shouts could almost be heard from the half moon itself.

"If I had asked him to return it there would be more fighting," Shadow crossed his arms and was near ready to begin rolling his eyes. "I'm here for answers, not to get between any squabble you have between Eggman and yourself." Knuckles was about to shout more things at Shadow until a white glove laid upon his shoulder.

Confused, the echidna turned his head to see a weary Silver. It almost looked as if the white hedgehog hadn't slept for days and it looked as if he was about to pass out right there and then. "Knuckles, its fine." His voice sounded weak and sounded as if the wind itself would be able to break it in half.

"Fine!?" Knuckles practically screeched. "Eggman with two chaos emeralds is **fine**!?"

"Shadow and Amy are here; and Sonic is safe." Logic reasoning seemed to have calmed Knuckles down enough for him to drop the argument, however, he turned around and headed straight for the machine to start ripping it to shreds in a fit of rage. Silver stared after the echidna giving a hefty sigh before he turned towards Shadow.

The black hedgehog almost grabbed the scruff of fur on Silver's chest but managed to hold himself back. "What did you do?" came an utter in a practical near growl. Before Silver could answer someone else cut in.

"Give him some slack alright?" The two hedgehogs turned to find Sonic being dragged from both his arms by Tails and Amy. A grin was plastered onto his face as he looked at his rival. "How did you guys even find us? Last we saw, you guys were in Shamar."

Amy sighed deciding to answer the calls of everyone's curiosity. "Its a long story… Shadow transported us to southern Haloska and we had to run in circles before we even saw New Proxima. We saw smoke rising from the city and we knew something terrible was happening so he transported us directly here." Amy shook her head, obviously still shaken from the jumps that Shadow put her through.

"You gotta tell us the full story later," Sonic's eyes drew away from Amy and towards Shadow who was giving the hedgehog a blank stare. The black hedgehog's mind was still mulling over what Silver might explain to him; he was expecting the worse possible outcome of what is to be spoken.

"I never want to go through that ever again," Amy practically shivered. If she wasn't the one supporting Sonic she would have rubbed her midsection as thoughts came flooding in of what she felt as she was transported from the city to the dunes.

"It gets easier the more you transport," Silver commented. As they were talking the Babylonians that hid from the attack began to come out of their homes or the buildings that they took shelter in. Some were taking pictures with their cell phones whilst others were assessing the damage from the attack. One reporter that had been around the area before the attack begun began to film the aftermath of the attack and reporting to the news station that they worked for (the group could barely hear anything from what they said even though they stood just a few meters away because of the large commotion from everyone else). Knuckles was starting to walk back towards the group after tearing apart the robotic and calming down from the conversation that he had with Silver and Shadow. Some of the Babylonians who walked to where the battle took place were holding small red cases that had first aid and ran towards the more injured citizens while one or two ran towards the group of heroes.

One first responder went immediately towards Sonic who was practically dead weight against his friends. "What happened to him?" she questioned as she motioned the two of them to sit Sonic down on the ground.

As Tails was about to answer the first responder opened their case and began to look over Sonic. "He was electrocuted, I'm not sure what the voltage was exactly but it had to be above 20mV." Tails assisted in placing bandages over burns that Sonic had. One electrical burn wrapped around his upper left arm, another wrapped around his upper chest just below the collarbone, whilst the last was below his knee on his right leg.

The burns were primarily first and second degree and as the first responder wrapped bandages and put cream on the burns she looked rather amazed at Sonic. "You could have died you know. I'm surprised that you're not worse off." Sonic gave a small shrug as she finished wrapping his leg up.

"Pft, this is nothing compared to some other stuff that loser put me through." Briefly he thought back to the werehog fiasco. Transforming to and from those forms were painful, practically on par to what he had been induced to. The blue blur figured that if he hadn't been holding a chaos emerald at the time that his injuries would have been far worse, and it would be possible that he could even be dead. Mentally the hedgehog frowned at that but was quick to dismiss those thoughts as the Babylonian finished up patching up his wounds.

Whilst the Babylonian was finishing patching up Sonic, Shadow turned his attention back to Silver. The white hedgehog noticed Shadow's stare almost immediately and turned towards him whilst fixing his golden cuff and tugging up on his glove nervously. He didn't say anything which perplexed Silver as he was half expecting to be questioned by the elder hedgehog to near death. It almost looked as if Shadow was going to begin interrogating Silver as those words were almost spilling off his lips but was refrained from such. Shadow figured that it would be a better idea to wait until later after things have died down to ask questions since there was already so much going on as is. He eventually turned away from Silver and began to look off into the distance apparently studying the city more closely and the younger hedgehog let out a breath of relief as he looked back towards Sonic.

"There." The Babylonian got up from the floor and looked over her handiwork. "That'll keep things together until we get you to the hospital-"

Sonic spoke up before she finished. "We don't really have much time for that." Fingers began to tap against the floor as he sat there looking at her. She gave a puzzled look at Sonic then turned her attention to his companions as if she couldn't believe that came out of his mouth.

"What he means to say is..." Silver paused for a second searching for the right words before Tails jumped in.

"That we can't stay here for very long since we need to figure out a way to return home." Tails glanced at Silver then to Shadow and Amy who looked at the fox with worry spread across their face (at least Amy did, Shadow's face looked more stern than anything). "I'm sorry, but we really can't afford to stay here much longer."

The Babylonian contemplated this for a moment before reaching down and picking up the cream that she had put on Sonic's wounds. "Normally I wouldn't let this slide," she began as she held out the cream to Tails. "But seeing as how you lot legitimately need to return home I _suppose_ I can let it slide." Tails took the cream that she handed to him graciously and nodded at her. "Since he won't be hospitalized it will take longer for him to recover, the cold weather should help dull the pain." The Babylonian pressed her fingered feathers together in front of herself then spread them apart to make a small square hologram appear with writing on it that the group couldn't make out. She began to type on it whilst she talked, "Where are you heading?"

Tails looked towards Silver who then stepped forward as Sonic began to get up with the help of Amy and Knuckles. "We're going to Alcyone," he answered.

"Then he should be fine as long as he rests," she bent down to close her first aid case as the hologram disappeared. "Just make sure he doesn't over exert himself on the way there, it's a long trek." Before the Babylonian turned towards the injured civilians she took a scarf from the pocket on her chest and handed it to Tails. "I found this on the floor, I'm guessing it's your's." Tails took the scarf that he had given to Sonic previously and smiled at the Babylonian who turned towards more civilians that were injured and ran towards them bumping into the news reporter that was on the scene.

The white hedgehog tugged at his ear and glanced towards Shadow then towards Amy who was fretting over Sonic and his wounds. "Think we should get out of here before any reporters surround us?" Knuckles glanced around at the reporters that were beginning to dangerously near them but were thankfully blocked off by any first responders or policeman that were on the scene.

They all mutually agreed verbally or nods with heads whilst Shadow still stood idle in the near back of the group as if waiting for this moment to walk towards the center. Sonic waved his hand towards Shadow as if tearing him away from his perpetual musing. "Hey, Shads, think you can chaos control us out of here?" A grin was spread across the hedgehog's face as Shadow nearly rolled his eyes towards his rival as he walked near.

He held out the chaos emerald away from his body as if already preparing himself to jump. "I can only transport us outside of the city, I already used too much of the chaos emerald's power."

Silver took a slight step forward, "Would my psychokinetic powers help?"

Shadow raised an eyebrow at Silver almost curiously, "Do you know how to induce chaos control?" The group looked towards Silver expectantly curious themselves over this matter. Dulfully, the hedgehog nodded in reply. "Impressive," the black hedgehog merely stated as he turned towards Silver offering the emerald to the hedgehog. Obviously, this sent all sorts of questions coursing through the group's heads. Mostly that wondering when Silver ever needed to induce chaos control or if he never had used it and is just lying. Regardless, they all braced themselves for the transportation already assuming the worse for the jump. Silver placed both hands over the chaos emerald barely just hovering over the jewel before focusing his mind upon the stone in Shadow's palm. He closed his eyes as Shadow did moments later as he then induced a chaos control.

The chaos control that was induced felt incredibly different than the ones Shadow had induced before. His had a violent feeling to it, like claws scratching at the side of one's face with putrid saliva dripping from the offender's mouth as they snarled at that whom walked through the portal. The one that Silver had helped to induce felt jagged and gave an aura as if Shadow wasn't wholly there. It wasn't violent, nor was it peaceful; but a jumbled mess of negative and positive emotions alike pushed upon him in a fury of absent thoughts and the physical embodiment of nothing. For just that moment Shadow felt empty and saw the world as nothing more but a chore to keep safe. This emotion Shadow never felt before in his decades of living and it felt so unnatural to himself that when he was spat out from the portal everything felt _wrong_. Everything about him felt so wrong and it felt as if someone had tore his sense of being and reality from him and held them above his head like an animal. Everyone else felt it too, all but Silver. The void that took place in everyone's heart was so sudden that it felt practically tangible as they hit the snowy ground and it hung there obvious to all.

Sonic fell flat on his face as he practically tripped out of the portal and all the others either fell on their rump or gracefully on their feet. They all lifted their heads heavy with a grief that they couldn't figure out what was and searched desperately for their sense of self through the confirmation that they were here in this reality and that they all lived and breathed. These emotions were mutually confirmed by one another through a silence that befell them all as they struggled to look at the space around them wondering if this was all just a dream.

Silver was the first to come to his sense as he didn't need to recover from this haze of unreality. Golden eyes looked around the area that they appeared in. There were two cliffs on either side of them and a long stretch of ground behind and in front of them. One cliff reached just an eighth of a mile above them and the other was more mountainous than most have been expecting. The sun was covered by a light cover of clouds and the snow that was falling had stopped and the newly born snow glimmered gently against the sun that barely reached in between the cliffs. It took Silver a moment to become accustomed to his surroundings and figure out where they were exactly before he spoke. "We have to go this way," he pointed towards the way opposite to which most were facing. "There's still a long way to go before we reach my home."

The word 'home' had a different tone than what most people were expecting. His use of home felt rather mechanical and off setting. It didn't sound like what a mother would say when telling her friend that she would be returning to her children which were at home, or a child who had not seen their living place in decades. Rather, it sounded like someone who merely called it that for the purpose of calling it that and felt absent of something. Most the group figured that the sound of the word home that Silver spoke about was the near unnatural feeling of emptiness inside themselves and ignored it, but Shadow barely bat an eye at the phrase.

Amy looked towards Silver as she dusted off her dress. "You have a home out _here_?" She tipped her head to the side looking at Silver expectantly. "What's it look like?"

Silver was half expecting Amy to trash talk the fact that his home was in the middle of nowhere but was pleasantly surprised at her curiosity about it. Ears perked as he looked at her almost confused but a smile soon began to etch upon his face. "Yeah," he replied almost bashfully as he began to walk towards the direction of the lab that hid away in the cliff. Everyone turned to follow suit with Tails holding onto Sonic whilst everyone walked around solo. "It's like an old abandoned research facility, it looks pretty neat."

The pink hedgehog's eyes began to slowly light up as she began to ask a flurry of questions about his humble abode. Silver answered each respectively and began to feel rather pleasant with himself even with the current situation and plaguing thoughts. Sonic walked towards Shadow as Amy had preoccupied herself with Silver with questions of his own for the black hedgehog. Shadow seemed to duly notice his rival nearly limp towards him and tried to ignore the stupid smirk that was plastered onto the other's face. "So Shads, miss me so much that you dove in to try and save me?"

The hedgehog glanced at Sonic and gave him a sneer before he glanced away. "Hardly," Shadow replied rather quickly. "I'm not here for you," Shadow pointed at Sonic almost accusingly. "I'm here for answers from him," he made a movement with his head signaling towards Silver who was engrossed with his conversation with Amy. Tails, who was by Sonic, had lost focus and had turned his attention towards the two who were talking of the future and its endeavours though vague as it may be.

Sonic bit the side of one of his cheeks almost unhappy with the reply that Shadow gave. "So then why aren't you bombarding him with questions? Going soft there, pal?" Shadow paused for a moment not quite sure how to answer the question. Red eyes looked from Sonic towards Silver for a moment then back towards Sonic who waited for Shadow to answer his question almost impatiently.

In reality, his mind was chewing on all the questions in his mind, questions in which he would have to wait to be answered privately. To announce that to Sonic wholeheartedly spelled disaster even if his answer was vague at best. "I'm still processing everything that's happening."

That was probably the weakest come back that Sonic has yet heard from Shadow but he took it anyway with a roll of the eyes. "Suuure," Sonic replied suspiciously dying of curiosity of Shadow's true intentions. Inevitably he dropped the conversation and walked in silence the rest of the way until they all arrived at the familiar cliff (familiar to Silver, Sonic, and Tails at least). "Home, sweet home," Sonic commented as Tails jumped from the cliff and gently lowered himself to the small platform sticking out from below. Amy stood towards the edge of the cliff and looked downwards where the small platform was cautiously.

Sonic walked by her and smiled. "Yo, Silv. Can you give us a lift?" The blue hedgehog waved at Silver who was about to float down to the door as Tails opened it. He nodded as Knuckles jumped from the cliff and glided down to the other wall and maneuvered himself to the platform. The white hedgehog held out his hand and the two slowly began to float downwards towards the platform but not without Amy giving a small yelp of surprised totally taken off guard by the weightlessness and attempting to cling herself to Sonic. When they reached the platform and weight was given back to them Silver turned towards Shadow. The hedgehog held up his hand before Silver could ask a single question and he then made a sudden jump towards the platform and gracefully landed nearly inside the doorway. Shadow turned to look at Silver who had begun to float down to the his humble abode but was given nothing but a long stare before Shadow turned away as Silver arrived. The cyan aura around him faded as he turned to give a final look around the outside of his home before pressing a button on the side for the triangular metal doors to slide shut. As Silver turned back to the long hallway most of the group had already entered the other door and were making themselves at home.

The time traveler half ran through the hallway and to the main room where Sonic was found already sitting on the couch along with Tails. Everyone else was looking around the old facility getting their bearings of what was going to be the place that they were to spend most of their time in the future in; at least until G.U.N finds it, which was hopefully never. The door closed behind Silver and it seemed that all eyes turned to face him expecting answers to everything and it was then that he began to steel himself for the worse of everything.

Shadow, who was standing near the kitchen area with hands cross, took a step or two towards Silver as he unfolded his arms to begin the interrogation. "What did you do?"

The culprit took a step back but felt the cold metal wall hit his back as panic began to slowly settle in deep within Silver. Truthfully, Silver had been bracing himself for Shadow's rage but he was taken off guard so suddenly he didn't know how to answer at first. "I-" he paused to gulp, "I accidently used the chaos emeralds when returning home and transported anything in the vicinity to the future. I don't understand how you and Amy could be here, you weren't even with us!" A motion was made with his hands towards the two of them.

There was a slow blink from Shadow as he crossed his hands and began to gently tap a finger against his arm. "All that chaos energy left an invisible portal from the past to the future. We might not be the only ones here you didn't originally transport, others could have gone through also." Silver's eyes began to widen as panic began to set in. Sonic, who now was up from the couch and near the two arguing hedgehogs, put both his hands up in front of him in near disbelief.

"Wait, so, how does that even work?" Sonic spoke up from beside the worn couch leaning against the armrest. "Wouldn't we already have known about other stringalongs if they got sent to the future?" Tails ears flicked slightly as he went into thought trying to do calculations in his head. "Say Espio investigates us missing and stumbles in on the portal, wouldn't he also be here?"

Sonic glanced at Tails for answers rather then Silver who was still trying to process what he had done. "Amy, how long were we gone before you guys were transported here?" Tails looked towards Amy who had been holding onto the edge of the table as if expecting someone to hit her square in the jaw.

"A couple of weeks," she replied promptly. "We all started to get worried about you, so I went to investigate. Shadow was there too, I'm not really sure why though.."

The fox's tails began to slowly flicker as he went back into thought as many looked at him expectantly. "A couple of days has passed for us _here_, so that means one day here accounts for roughly a week in the past."

"One week!?" Silver shouted. "Do you know how many people could have stumbled here in one week?" His breath began to quicken as panic set in the time traveler's heart.

Sonic made a small attempt to help the younger hedgehog from spiralling over in complete panic. "Relax, Silver. They could have blocked off the area by the time Shadow and Amy got sent here. It'll be alright-"

"Alright!?" Silver interrupted. "I-I could have doomed everyone! The whole time continuum could be screwed up and nothing could fix it no matter how hard I try!" Tears were beginning to kiss the hedgehog's cheeks as he began to near hyperventilate. "E-Everything is messed up because of me and I can't do anything to fix it! I can't watch my future be ruined again, not after how hard I tried to make it perfect!" That feeling of despair was crawling into Silver's chest and making itself home to him as he fruitlessly rubbed his eyes. "D-Damn it."

Those tears burned at his eyes and it felt as if fire itself touched them. A dread silence took up in the room as each looked at each other with pity or they stood there looking blankly at Silver who was trying to wipe away the panic. It didn't take long for Sonic to walk towards Silver and rest a hand on his shoulder giving a small smile to the pained hedgehog. "You don't know that. Things could return the way they were when we go back home and we close the portal." Sniffling, Silver lowered his hands to look at Sonic.

His mouth barely opened to form words before Tails interrupted him, "-and my calculations could be off! Once I've done enough research I'll be able to do exact calculations." Silver's half opened lips closed and he felt a little better but the empty feeling that came after a panic attack was setting in upon itself. The time traveler bit the inside of his lip as his attention was brought back towards Shadow who stood there arms still crossed with a frown on his face.

Silver had just enough time to calm himself before Shadow opened his mouth to ask another question. "One last question," he uttered as Sonic looked towards him. "Then I'll leave you alone." With a nod the hedgehog let Shadow go on still in pain. "Is the amnesia normal?"

"Sometimes," was a sigh given. The hedgehog looked to the side and was about to open his mouth to speak more but the hedgehog soon turned away to leave. It seemed he was content with that answer, and the hedgehog gave no qualms to that. Confusion fluttered on his mind for a bit before Silver looked towards Sonic who gave him a smile in turn.

Sonic gave a small pat on Silver's shoulder before he turned towards where Shadow had slipped away. "I'll go give the tour while you and Tails do your science-y things." The blue hedgehog's hand lingered for a second longer before he moved away and asked Amy and Knuckles to join him on the quick tour. Amy, who gleefully took the opportunity to claim it was a date, wrapped her arm around Sonic's who began to near regret asking her to follow. Knuckles shrugged and followed soon after almost chuckling at Amy clinging to Sonic.

The two in the room that were left sat there looking after them before Silver rounded the couch and sat down gently brushing some dust that had collected over the hundreds of years off. "Has he always been like this?" Tails looked to Silver for a moment then back towards the place where the rest of the gang had disappeared to.

"Sonic? Of course," Tails smiled still looking at the dimly lit hallway. "Even when I was a little kid. He didn't talk that much but whenever he did it was always words of encouragement."

"I mean Shadow, has he always been like that?"

"You'ld have to ask Sonic but he's gotten better."

"Better?" Silver replied curiously. There was a tip of his head as he looked towards Tails whose head was still craning towards the hallway.

"Yeah," the fox shifted to look towards Silver and brought his hands to rest atop of his lap. "I wouldn't put it past him though, he's been through a lot."

There was a pause, "Right. I understand." Another long pause ensued before Silver turned towards Tails and took a deep breath in. "Well, what do you need to know for our science experiment?"


	13. vengeful

"I thought you said you would leave me alone," there came a couple of blinks from the hedgehog as he slowly became accustomed to the darkness. He was laying on the couch in the main living space having fallen asleep after Tails left to venture into the labs to see what could be scavenged. Though Silver wasn't sure what time it was he could tell that everyone was either asleep or still looking through the labs due to the silence and the now dimmed lights. Now having been shaken from his slumber and golden eyes opening to reveal Shadow kneeling by the couch Silver's mood had dropped rather considerably. It was in that moment that he contemplated on turning around to face the cushions and attempt to go back to sleep or at least feign such.

"I have more questions," Shadow replied plainly. It was almost painfully obvious he was letting on more than what he would say but still Silver was still quite upset over what had transpired a couple of hours ago.

Silver's eyes narrowed in turn with a grimace appearing upon his lips. "Where is everyone else?" Slowly the hedgehog began to sit up from his laying position and gave a stretch.

"Deeper in the labs," the black hedgehog stood up from his kneeling position not considering in taking a seat besides Silver. "Let's talk someplace else, somewhere more private." He moved away from Silver which in turn earned Shadow a rather curious look from the younger one. Brow became raised and cautiously the hedgehog got up from the couch looking round the place as if he had gone to a place unknown to him with the nap he had taken.

There was a turn of his wrists as he looked at Shadow who was now moving towards the door to the outside. "Why? I really doubt that the others would care about what you want to ask me if they walk in." He stayed planted near the couch as the door slid open to the hallway and there came a glance from the elder hedgehog.

"Because these questions are between me and you." Heart began to race in Silver's chest. The hand upon his cuff grew greater and it seemed that he was about to cut off the circulation to his hand. Nervousness was setting in the child but he played it off as if nothing happened and began to move towards Shadow following him. Mind raced to try and figure out what such questions the hedgehog wanted him to answer, many of which were idiotic questions that Silver doubted Shadow wanted to even know about. Part of him figured that they were questions about amnesia or these were questions about what became of Shadow in the future, nonetheless there was still that slight bit of panic concerning Silver's origins. Did he know?

Regardless Silver followed closely by Shadow. When they had gotten to the cliff the child offered to float him up to the surface but the other declined and opted to jump up there by himself. It impressed Silver to no end that Shadow had such strength but it was expected considering that Shadow was built for such actions. They ventured deeper into the snow before Shadow began to finally talk at last. "You mentioned to Amy that there was a city here."

Ears perked at the sudden question and Silver's mind was pulled away from his previous thoughts. "Huh? Yeah there is. One of the entrances should be around here but I don't think they would let us in anyway." Silver moved towards one of the cliffs that was by the side of them and placed his hand upon it. "I could try to warp us on one of the buildings since it shouldn't be that far from where we're standing."

There was a huff from Shadow and Silver wasn't quite sure if it was a snort or a laugh. "No, it's fine." There was a pause as he looked from Silver towards the landscape around them. The younger hedgehog looked at Shadow expecting questions but instead the hedgehog began to walk again to which Silver made a slight jog to catch up with him.

It was only after a couple more minutes of walking that Silver broke the ice. He came to a slow stop and placed a hand upon his hipped almost annoyed. "What did you want to ask me? I think we're far enough away from them so no one can hear us." Shadow in turn slowly stopped also, he didn't even bother to turn to look at the younger child.

"How much have I told you?"

Truthfully, the question confused Silver. Narrowed eyes and a tip of his head as mind searched for the meaning of what Shadow had asked. It took him a couple of seconds for the revelation to dawn on Silver. Shadow had been asking about Silver's future endeavours, he _**knew **_that Silver had met Shadow in the future and that they had discussed things that this present Shadow couldn't share so easily. The minute pause felt to have lasted an hour and Silver began to shake as his mouth became parch.

"Enough," was his response as eyes fell downward to the snowy earth. "The ARK, Black Arms." There was another pause as his voice became lower, "Maria." Shadow had now turned round to face Silver full on. Expression had not changed however within his eyes questions still burned deep within.

"I see," it was apparent that Shadow wasn't so interested in learning of what Silver knew of him. He stared at Silver for a time as the younger hedgehog obviously had something he wanted to say. Mouth was open just enough for the words to barely fall out and Shadow gave Silver a look. "Out with it!" he commanded but Silver shook his head in turn.

"No, it's nothing. Nothing you need to know." He turned one of his cuffs and slowly wrapped that hand round his arm. Nails began to dig into his skin. Nervousness set in. "I'm guessing this isn't all you want to know," he gestured towards nothing finally letting go of his arm. Shoulders began to feel heavy with his lies.

A small huff. "You're right, what I want to know is more delicate." Red eyes looked to behind Silver and the hedgehog soon became confused. Golden ones turned to stare behind him as Shadow began once more, "You can come out Tails, I'm done with my questions." Furrowed brows as the fox slowly made his way out from behind the snow covered rock donning a scarf and mittens.

"Tails? What are you doing here?" Silver turned towards Shadow, "How did you know he was here?"

"I invited him," Shadow replied giving a small nod at Tails. An even more confused look came upon the hedgehog. "There are memories we keep having that we know never happened."

"This seems really fishy to me," was his cautious reply. "Why keep this from the others?" it was a question directed more or less at Tails.

"I wanted to ask you them in front of everyone but these memories are a little too private for us to discuss in public." Tails looked down at the snowy floor as if ashamed of keeping secrets from Sonic. "And I don't really want Sonic to know about them."

There was a long drawn out breath as Silver looked between Tails and Shadow. He trusted the two of them, however he felt this was all too sudden for his liking. "Alright," he spoke carefully. "I'll try to answer the best of my ability. I'm not an expert on it but you guys are really are making me curious as to what these memories are. Tails?"

A pause before Tails began, it was obvious the child was steeling himself for what he was about to talk about. "I first had those memories when we got captured by that giant leech. I told Sonic that I had a dream I was drowning but that wasn't true." He shook his head feeling guilty, "In reality I had a dream that felt like a vision of the past. You were trying to kill Sonic, you were about to impale him." Silver suddenly began to look pale, dark skin took a turn to look more white than ever. He gulped, "I know you tried to kill him before but it wasn't the same. You were just trying to get rid of us, drive us away. This time you really looked as if you were trying to kill him." The fox glanced towards Shadow who kept his blank stare though behind those eyes he could see his own memories beginning to fester.

A second pause before Silver gathered the courage to speak. "Do you know why I was trying to kill him?" he already knew the answer.

"Something about him ruining the future," Tails replied carefully. A small scoff came from Silver as if his fears were confirmed. "What is it?"

"Nothing, at least not yet. I just need to think that over for a bit." Golden eyes turned to stare at the icy cliff for a second before Silver turned towards Shadow. "You?"

A shake of the head was given in reply at first, "The same as Tails. Only I saved Sonic from you choking him to death. We fought, you almost killed me, but the memory stops short after I induce a chaos control." It was like Shadow to keep things so plain and simple, it almost spooked other two by how plain the explanation was.

"More detail would help," the child spoke waving his hand in a motion for the other to go on.

Shadow sighed a deep sigh as he stared elsewhere as if he himself were trying to repress these visions. "You called me Mephiles, I don't know if that means anything to you but it does to me." Silver looked bitter at the name Mephiles being spoken, it was almost as if he took a sip of rotten beer. "Know what that is?"

"Yes," came a sigh then a pause. "_Fuck!_" Hands placed themselves upon his forehead as he began to curse at nothing. The hedgehog had tried so hard to bury this part of the past and with so many accusations it was impossible to hide it any longer. Secrets could not be kept any longer with such visions being presented to him, still Silver was quite surprised no one else felt the same as the three. Part of him was thankful but another thought that the others were trying their hardest to repress it.

"Are you ok?" Tails asked walking up to Silver putting a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"I'm fine." It was a lie and they all knew it still they kept silent as Silver went on to explain his fear. Lowering his hands he gave a deep inhale and began his story. "The visions you explained to me- they're not just visions. Those are memories of a time that was destroyed. You **all** lived through it, I was born into it." It was hard to reveal so many things about himself so suddenly but this was something he needed. Still he could not help but feel sick to his stomach at the truth behind it all. "When the timeline was destroyed your memories and existence ceased to exist, I escaped from it somehow. What you're seeing are just memories of that time. I don't know why they're manifesting but it might be because of time travel. Though those memories were suppose to be destroyed they still live on the waves of time. They could have just found you when travelling from past to present."

The hedgehog shook his head with a heavy burden, ears shifting as Shadow took in a deep breath taking it all in. "And what about memories we lost that are coming back to us not related to that incident?"

"They too would return. Memories don't die, they pool together until someone takes a sip." Silver took his hand to press his quills down and gave a drawn out sigh.

"That sip is time travelling, right?" Tails continued Silver's thought. He was interested in the mechanism of time and yet he could hear the fear beginning to settle in the child's stomach. The most terrifying of things had not even happened yet, what the two thought was enough was the mere beginning of time travel. "What about the amnesia?"

"Time is vengeful. It takes and gives what it wants. Sometimes you're lucky and it takes nothing, other times it wants everything you own." Silver's voice is bitter. The taste on his tongue tastes like oil and the cold he had become so accustomed to makes him shiver. Time had taken everything away from him and practically owned his entire life. Twas a topic that he kept mostly to himself yet it seemed he could not avoid such prying questions. Depression began to crawl up his spine but he did his best to keep his feelings under check. Pain grabbed his heart and began to pluck at the strings. "We should get back, we've been out here for awhile and the others might be looking for us." Without waiting for confirmation Silver turned to leave. He was fleeing from his feelings, from loneliness and despair. No one made a move to stop him except Tails who merely lifted his hand up to halt the moving hedgehog but lowered it at Shadow's shake of his head.

Once Silver was out of hearing range Tails gave a sigh then looked at Shadow. "It sounds terrible."

"Do you think he's telling the truth?" Shadow asked almost in a whispered grunt. Arms had now since crossed over his chest and gaze we left to look at the now fading hedgehog.

"Of course he is, I don't think anyone would make that sort of stuff up." Tails reply was almost like a snap. Brows furrowing just slightly to give Shadow an annoyed look. "Besides, didn't you hear his voice? It almost sounded-"

"Lost. I know." Shadow finished Tails' sentence. Face twisted slightly to give a melancholic look. The voice he knew was akin to the voice he had after being untangled from the Dark Arms. The vacant feeling of being lost and not knowing where to go, for having been owned for so long and let go to do as one pleased. It was an odd fluster of emotions that couldn't be well described as all of them contradicted each other yet still had their own presence within one's self. Shadow still felt them at times, they were terrible and struck at him without any prior feeling. Those times were dreaded and it made him feel hollow. "I know how he feels." Before long Shadow unfolded his arms and began to walk back towards their 'house'. He had contemplated before after asking Silver all the questions he needed to return back and travel the realm to find the chaos emeralds himself yet now with all his queries answered he wasn't so sure. Though he worked terribly in groups he couldn't stop himself but feel pity for Silver and for the situation he had gotten themselves into. Damn himself for these retched thoughts, but the least he could do was help; or at least leave the emerald he had found to them.

Tomorrow he would make his decision, but for now he would listen to their next course of action.


End file.
